Elysian Shadows

Hey guys,

I saw the link for this online course today, immediately signed up, and thought of everyone who should know. I know this is a website about game development primarily, but since so many of us use c/++ in our every day life I thought at least some of you would be interested in taking the class as well.

Here is the one sentence line description of the course:

Participants in this free online course will develop their own C++ compiler, standard library, and toolchain with the following features:

Compliant with the latest 2011 standard (C++11)
Written entirely in C++ with no third-party dependencies
Code generator targeting Linux x86_64
Full toolchain including preprocessor, assembler, and linker
Will build with itself (self-hosting) and pass provided conformance test suite

a link:
http://www.cppgm.org/

Personally since I spent so much of my time the past few years learning C++, the STL, templates, compilers, etc... that this would be a great way to learn more about the C++/C language/tool-chain.

I'd be curious to chat w/anyone who is interested long-term on this. Hopefully I'm not getting my hopes up, and this course is as good as I hope it will be.

Sounds pretty awesome. The only slightly sad bit is that you are not allowed to to share your code base upon completion (though with good reason). Definitely a noteworthy project that's going to require a great deal of effort though. Not something I'll be supplementing my homework with any time soon.

I would love to attend, but I don't have anywhere near the time to contribute...

I heard about this. Some theories going around on reddit about companies using the cert to get work done for them for free, or something?

MarauderIIC wrote:I heard about this. Some theories going around on reddit about companies using the cert to get work done for them for free, or something?

Considering it's a bunch of random people writing C++ compilers I highly doubt that. Not like any of them are going to compete with GCC.

dandymcgee wrote:Not like any of them are going to compete with GCC.

Or Clang in particular. which was both designed so it would be useful for building C++ tools, and is under a BSD license.

wtetzner wrote:

dandymcgee wrote:Not like any of them are going to compete with GCC.

Or Clang in particular. which was both designed so it would be useful for building C++ tools, and is under a BSD license.

Very true, but I can actually see a scenario where this would greatly benefit them.

Imagine you're a silicon vendor who just created your own microcontroller architecture. Instead of extending GCC and having to release your compiler for free, you could write your own compiler and charge for both the chip and the toolchain.

Going for it! Thanks for the resource!

the first course preview was posted today, with a github link to download the skeleton code.

http://www.cppgm.org/pa1.html

short wrote:the first course preview was posted today, with a github link to download the skeleton code.

http://www.cppgm.org/pa1.html

I enrolled today. I feel quite certain that the course will eventually be too difficult for me to handle, but until then I'm doing it.

I just wanted to say that, even though I currently don't have a fraction of the free time needed for this project, the material provided on the first assignment is really good, with links to the c++ standard and the dragon book, stub code that is quite good (for stub code), explanations on relevant topics not just to compilers, but to CS as a whole and tips for implementation. From what I've seen, I recommend everyone interested on the subject to take a look. I even showed it to the Compilers' teacher here at work.