CS410P/510 Essentials of Compilation Winter 2026

Instructor: Andrew Tolmach

Email: tolmach@pdx.edu
Office Hours: by appointment, on zoom or in person (send email)

Please fill out this form as soon as possible.

Course Information

Syllabus
Slack channel Note: the first time you use this link, it will take you to the general page for the pdx-cs workspace; you need to sign in to access the specific course channel.

Textbook

Most of the course will be based on the on-line textbook by Jeremy Siek, "Essentials of Compilation: An Incremental Approach in Python." We will use a modified and extended version of the book, which will become available in stages during the course. The most recent version of the book will always be available here [Latest version: 1/27/26 4:00pm]

Homework

Homeworks will be due weekly at 4pm on Mondays.
Homeworks will be issued and submitted via GitHub Classroom.
- Details to appear shortly.
- Make sure that you have a working GitHub account.
- Using SSH keys to communicate with GitHub is highly recommended.

Schedule

Highly subject to change!
Reading chapter references are to the PSU-specialized version of "Essentials of Compilation." Initial reading of each chapter should be done before the specified date.

Date	Reading	HW Due	Topics	Recording	Resources
Jan 6			Introduction	(recording--missing beginning)	Rough lecture notes CS358 Lecture on compiler Structure
Jan 8	Ch. 1		Preliminaries; Integers; Python idioms	(recording)
Jan 12 @ 4pm		week1
Jan 13	Ch. 2		Code Review; Variables	(recording)
Jan 15			Implementing Variables	(recording)
Jan 19 @ 4pm		week2
Jan 20	Ch. 4		Code Review; Register Allocation	(recording)	liveness example
Jan 22			Register Allocation	(recording)
Jan 26 @ 4pm		week3
Jan 27	Ch. 5		Code Review; Booleans and Control Flow	(recording)
Jan 29			Implementing Booleans and Control Flow	(recording)
Feb 2 @ 4pm		week4
Feb 3	Ch. 6		Code Review; Loops and Dataflow Analysis
Feb 5			Dataflow Analysis
Feb 10	(none)		Midterm (in class)
Feb 12		week5	Optimization
Feb 16 @ 4pm		week6
Feb 17	Ch. 7		Code review; Tuples and Garbage Collection
Feb 19			Implementing GC
Feb 23 @ 4pm		week7
Feb 24	Ch. 8		Code review; More Garbage Collection
Feb 26			Functions; Implementing Functions
Mar 3	(none)		Compiler Verification
Mar 5			Java Virtual Machine and Interpretation
Mar 9 @ 4pm		week8
Mar 10	Nystrom Ch.2		Bytecode and efficient interpretation
Mar 12			Execution Architectures
Thursday Mar 19			Final exam (11:10am-1pm)

Resources

We will be using the Python (v3.12+) language, basedpyright type checker, linux or MacOS operating system, and X86-64 computer architecture for the homework in this course.

You may choose to work (remotely) on the CS department linux machines. New students can obtain access to the CS linux machines via their MCECS account, which can be activated using CRAM.

Github Resources

Instructions for pulling template changes each week [revised Jan12 11:55am]

Python Resources

Machine Code Resources

General Books on Compilers

Torben Mogensen, Basics of Compiler Design, 2010. (Freely available on-line.)
Keith Cooper and Linda Torczon, Engineering a Compiler 2nd ed., Morgan Kaufmann, 2012. (First edition is almost identical.)
Al Aho, Monica Lam, Ravi Sethi, and Jeff Ullman, Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools, 2nd ed. , Addison-Wesley, 2006.
Steve Muchnick, Advanced Compiler Design & Implmentation, Morgan Kaufmann, 1997.
Christopher Fraser and David Hanson, A Retargetable C Compiler: Design and Implementation, Benjamin/Cummings, 1995.
Andrew Appel, Modern Compiler Implementation in Java, 2nd ed., Cambridge UP, 2002. (Or earlier editions; be careful to check errata on author's web page.)
Randy Allen and Ken Kennedy, Optimizing Compilers for Modern Architectures, Morgan Kaufmann, 2002.
Robert Morgan, Building an Optimizing Compiler, Digital Press, 1998.
Anders Møller and Michael Schwartzbach, Static Program Analysis, 2020. (Freely available on-line.)
Robert Nystrom, Crafting Interpreters, 2021. (Freely available on-line.)