Programming Language with LLVM

Learn Programming Language Implementation with LLVM

Dive deep into how programming languages work with this practical course! Go beyond the basics and gain a comprehensive understanding of language semantics, from compilation to execution. This course focuses on building a lower-level programming language using the powerful LLVM compiler infrastructure.

What You'll Discover:

• Compiler vs. Interpreter: Understand the fundamental differences between these two approaches to program execution.
• Virtual Machines & JIT Compilation: Explore how virtual machines and Just-In-Time (JIT) compilers optimize code for performance.
• Functional vs. Imperative Programming: Grasp the core concepts of these programming paradigms and their impact on language design.
• LLVM IR: Learn to compile your own language to LLVM Intermediate Representation (IR), the foundation for many modern languages.
• Lower-Level Compilation: Gain insights into how production-level languages like C++, Rust, and others are compiled.
• Programming Language Semantics: Build a full programming language, end-to-end, in a focused 4-6 hour learning experience.
• Practical Programming Skills: Enhance your proficiency in other programming languages by understanding the inner workings of language implementation.

Who Should Take This Course?

This course is ideal for:

• Engineers seeking to build complex systems.
• Developers interested in compiler design and optimization.
• Anyone curious about the inner workings of programming languages.
• Those wanting to gain practical experience with LLVM and its compiler infrastructure.

Prerequisites:

• Familiarity with the concepts of eval, closures, scope chains, and environments (ideally from a course on interpreters).
• Basic C++ experience (focuses on transferable concepts, not advanced C++ features).

What We'll Use:

We utilize C++ for implementation due to its performance characteristics, while focusing on basic, portable constructs. The code is designed to be easily adaptable to other languages like Rust or higher-level languages such as Python.

What Makes This Course Unique?

• Concise & Focused: Each lecture is self-contained and directly addresses the topic.
• Visual Learning: Animated presentations combined with live coding and editing for better understanding of object structures.
• Hands-on Implementation: Follow along and implement every detail of the LLVM compiler. The full source code is available, but you'll be challenged with "Implement here" assignments.
• End-to-End Project: Build a complete programming language from scratch.

Course Curriculum (20 Lectures):

• Part 1: LLVM Basic Constructs - Compilation & Interpretation Pipeline, LLVM IR, Bitcode Compilation
• Part 2: Functions and Stack - Control Flow (if expressions, while loops), Stack Variables, Nested Blocks, Function Compilation
• Part 3: Object-Oriented Programming - Classes, Instances, Heap Allocation, Garbage Collection
• Part 4: Higher-Order Functions - Closures, Functional Programming, Lambda Functions, Executable Implementation

Start building your own programming language today!