Resources List: Compilers

Reading

68 resources on creating programming languages
GCC Wiki - List of compiler books
10 papers that all PhD students in programming languages ought to know: a list compiled by Northeastern’s PL faculty of (roughly) ten academic papers that they think every student in PL should know. Not all of them are PL papers themselves, and they don’t form a full foundation on their own, but they form a kind of “great books” list for PL.
Classic Papers in Programming Languages and Logic by Karl Crary
Jordan Rose (Swift team) recommendations
http://jschuster.org/blog/2016/11/29/getting-started-in-programming-languages/
Jonathan Turner’s Reading List: Turner is an engineer on Mozilla’s Rust team and recently posted his reading list for getting up-to-speed on programming languages. The list starts with some resources on how to build interpreters and compilers, but also points to more academic material later.
Papers to read
Programming Language and Compilers Reading List
Resources for Amateur Compiler Writers

Great Works in Programming Languages: a list by Dr. Pierce, the professor who wrote Types and Programming Languages and Software Foundations, about great papers in the PL field
- https://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/courses/670Fall04/GreatWorksInPL.shtml
- https://www.cs.cornell.edu/courses/cs7194/2019sp/

Detection

Pre-defined Compiler Macros - https://sourceforge.net/p/predef/wiki/

Architectures - https://sourceforge.net/p/predef/wiki/Architectures/
- Compilers - https://sourceforge.net/p/predef/wiki/Compilers/
- Endianness - https://sourceforge.net/p/predef/wiki/Endianness/
- Language Standards - https://sourceforge.net/p/predef/wiki/Standards/
- Operating Systems - https://sourceforge.net/p/predef/wiki/OperatingSystems/
- Standard Libraries - https://sourceforge.net/p/predef/wiki/Libraries/

SPY: Friendly Neighborhood C++17 Constexpr Predef Wrapper

OS, compiler, libc, stdlib detection
- https://github.com/jfalcou/spy

Conferences

Compilers Call For Papers for Conferences, Workshops and Journals at WikiCFP - http://www.wikicfp.com/cfp/call?conference=compilers

Computer Architecture and Compilers Conference Map - http://archconfmap.com/

ASPLOS: International Conference on Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems - https://asplos-conference.org/ - http://dblp.uni-trier.de/db/conf/asplos/
CASES: Compilers, Architecture, and Synthesis for Embedded Systems - http://www.esweek.org/cases - http://dblp.uni-trier.de/db/conf/cases/
CC: The International Conference on Compiler Construction - http://conf.researchr.org/series/CC - http://dblp.uni-trier.de/db/conf/cc/
CGO: International Symposium on Code Generation and Optimization - http://cgo.org/ - http://dblp.uni-trier.de/db/conf/cgo/
History of Programming Languages (HOPL)
HPCA: International Symposium on High-Performance Computer Architecture - https://www.hpca-conf.org/ - http://dblp.uni-trier.de/db/conf/hpca/
ICFP: International Conference on Functional Programming - http://icfpconference.org/ - http://dblp.uni-trier.de/db/conf/icfp/
International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE)
ISMM: International Symposium on Memory Management - http://www.sigplan.org/Conferences/ISMM/ - http://dblp.uni-trier.de/db/conf/iwmm/
LCTES: Languages, Compilers, and Tools for Embedded Systems - https://conf.researchr.org/series/LCTES - http://dblp.uni-trier.de/db/conf/* lctrts/
OOPSLA: Object-Oriented Programming Systems, Languages and Applications - http://www.sigplan.org/Conferences/OOPSLA/ - http://www.oopsla.org/ - http://dblp.uni-trier.de/db/conf/oopsla/
PACT: International Conference on Parallel Architecture and Compilation - http://pactconf.org/ - http://dblp.uni-trier.de/db/conf/IEEEpact/
PLDI: Programming Language Design and Implementation - http://www.sigplan.org/Conferences/PLDI/ - http://dblp.uni-trier.de/db/conf/pldi/
- Best of PLDI 2004
POPL: Principles of Programming Languages - http://www.sigplan.org/Conferences/POPL/ - http://dblp.uni-trier.de/db/conf/popl/
PPoPP: ACM SIGPLAN Symposium on Principles and Practice of Parallel Programming - http://www.sigplan.org/Conferences/PPOPP/ - http://dblp.uni-trier.de/db/conf/ppopp/
SAS: International Static Analysis Symposium - http://www.staticanalysis.org/ - http://dblp.uni-trier.de/db/conf/sas/
SCOPES: International Workshop on Software and Compilers for Embedded Systems - http://www.scopesconf.org/ - http://dblp.uni-trier.de/db/conf/scopes/
SIGPLAN Awards
SPLASH
Summit on Advances in Programming Languages (SNAPL)

Talks

2019

An overview of Clang
- 2019 LLVM Developers’ Meeting; Sven van Haastregt, Anastasia Stulova
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kkMpJpIGYU
- http://llvm.org/devmtg/2019-10/talk-abstracts.html#tut8
GCC under the hood
- Linaro Connect San Diego 2019; Siddhesh Poyarekar
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brxAm99w8D8
- https://siddhesh.in/gcc-under-the-hood.pdf
- https://siddhesh.in/posts/gcc-under-the-hood.html
- https://linaroconnectsandiego.sched.com/event/SubD/san19-221-gcc-under-the-hood
Introduction to LLVM
- 2019 LLVM Developers’ Meeting; Eric Christopher & Johannes Doerfert
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5xExRGaIIY

2018

Introduction to LLVM: Building simple program analysis tools and instrumentation
- FOSDEM 2018; Mike Shah
- https://fosdem.org/2018/schedule/event/introduction/
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKIv_Bkp4pk
- slides & code: http://www.mshah.io/fosdem18.html

2017

Getting started with LLVM: the TL;DR version
- LinaroOrg Connect San Francisco 2017; Diana Picus
- https://connect.linaro.org/resource/sfo17/sfo17-110/
LLVM Internals #2
- Linaro Connect Budapest 2017; Renato Golin, Peter Smith, Diana Picus, Omair Javaid, Adhemerval Zanella
- http://connect.linaro.org/resource/bud17/bud17-302/

2016

Introduction to LLVM – Projects, Components, Integration, Internals
- Linaro Connect Las Vegas 2016; Renato Golin
- http://connect.linaro.org/resource/las16/las16-501/
Anders Hejlsberg on Modern Compiler Construction
- Channel 9; May 12, 2016
- https://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/Seth-Juarez/Anders-Hejlsberg-on-Modern-Compiler-Construction
STOKE: Search-Based Compiler Optimization
- UCI CS Distinguished Lecture; April 29, 2016; Alex Aiken
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZFeTTFp7x4

2015

Understanding Compiler Optimization
- Meeting C++ 2015; Chandler Carruth
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnGCDLhaxKU
Stochastic Optimization for x86 Binaries
- Google Tech Talks; January 12, 2015; Eric Schkufza
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aD9mZDJzb58

2014

Superoptimizing LLVM
- UW CSE Colloquium; December 2, 2014; John Regehr
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ux0YnVEaI6A
Compiler Technologies
- Northwest C++ Users' Group; October 15, 2014; Jim Hogg
- http://nwcpp.org/october-2014.html

2013

Compiler Confidential
- GoingNative 2013; Eric Brumer
- https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/GoingNative/2013/Compiler-Confidential

Tags: reading language development computer science list

Last modified 11 December 2025