My situation: I am writing this because I feel that I owe a lot to the authors. I am a University student and I developed an interest in compilation and interpretation. I had access to a wide range of texts at my University but I struggled to get a foothold in the field. I was having difficulty turning the theory presented in these academic texts into practice in my own attempts at compilers.
Ideal for me: I had given up on the field for the time being when I came across this book. I could not believe it. It was not what I was looking for because I had no idea it existed, but it quickly became apparent that it was ideal for my situation. My preferred language is Java and so this just helped to make the examples jump out of the page at me that little bit more.
Working through the book: I enjoyed working through the book and found it very readable and self-explanatory. The examples are excellent and reinforce every concept presented by the book. It stood out from everything I... Read more

This is really the greatest 'Compiler for Dummies' book as of today. I own and studied all books (total arround 80) about compiler constructions you can buy in the world today plus a lot of out of print titles, so I know what you can buy on the market...

If you're looking for a learning-by-coding compiler book don't look futher. This is a great introbook for a Bachelor of Science of a Professional Bachelor student! If you have the money to buy only one compiler book buy this one. If you have the money to buy 2 books and you also know a bit C++, buy this one and 'Writting compilers and Interpreters' from Ronald Mak which also offers a pratical approach which is also nice for newbies but not that nice as this book.

If you have finished this book and want to get more theoretical insight or you're a Computer Science M.Sc student (like me), read 'Programming Language Pragmatics' from Mr. Scott, which don't present the material on a dry manner. This book covers all... Read more

It's a lot of work creating a textbook like this, and the authors did a great job along certain dimensions. The book is well-organized and much more accessible than many (in)famous compilers books. The copy editing is high-quality: there aren't many mistakes in the book. The book itself is beautifully bound and printed, making it a pleasure to read. There's lots of sample code. On the whole, it's not a bad effort.
There -are- some real problems with it, though. The most obvious and central problem is that it's not a book by (or for) Java programmers. It feels very much as if the book was hastily rewritten from "Language Processors in Pascal" to "Language Processors in Java" after Java exploded in popularity, a year or two before the book was published. The mini-Triangle language is clearly a Pascal derivative, and many of the "pseudo-code" examples are really Pascal. Pascal may be a teaching language, but it looks completely alien to Java... Read more