pervognsen,
@pervognsen@mastodon.social avatar

It's always been odd to me that the standard introductory textbooks on formal languages and computation usually don't mention the least fixed point approach to context-free languages versus the standard derivational approach ("a string belongs to the language generated by a context-free grammar if there is a derivation of that string from the grammar's start symbol").

zwarich,
@zwarich@hachyderm.io avatar

@pervognsen What's the most introductory textbook that even proves this, nevermind using it as a basis for their treatment? Bonus points if they take a greatest fixed point approach to automata.

pervognsen, (edited )
@pervognsen@mastodon.social avatar

@zwarich I honestly don't know of anything. I remember an in-progress book by Jean Gallier on formal languages that introduced it side by side with derivations and used it for a nice proof of the annoying-to-prove theorem that every CFG has a Greibach Normal Form. Looks like it might have been this one: https://www.cis.upenn.edu/~jean/gbooks/tocnotes.html. (But like most of his expository writing, it's kind of drowned out in formalism, it looks like.)

rudrabeniwal,
@rudrabeniwal@mastodon.social avatar

deleted_by_author

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  • pervognsen,
    @pervognsen@mastodon.social avatar

    @rudrabeniwal All the streams are archived on YouTube. I probably wouldn't recommend it. For one, I stopped the project before achieving all the topics I was hoping to cover, especially most of the hardware design topics. But we did write a decently large chunk of a systems software toolchain. So, probably not worth the massive time investment it would take you to follow along with the videos, but it's up to you.

    rudrabeniwal,
    @rudrabeniwal@mastodon.social avatar

    deleted_by_author

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  • pervognsen,
    @pervognsen@mastodon.social avatar

    @rudrabeniwal That's too broad of a question to answer; it also depends heavily on your existing background. What specific topic?

    rudrabeniwal,
    @rudrabeniwal@mastodon.social avatar

    deleted_by_author

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  • pervognsen,
    @pervognsen@mastodon.social avatar

    @rudrabeniwal I still don't know anything about your background. What have you already done? How much systems programming? Do you already know this material at a level you would get from taking undergrad CS courses in operating systems, compilers, etc?

    pervognsen,
    @pervognsen@mastodon.social avatar

    @rudrabeniwal Anyway, I'm not personally a huge fan of most of the standard textbooks on compilers but Cooper and Torczon's Engineering a Compiler is probably the best. For operating systems design and implementation there are many good options but I like Comer's Operating System Design: The Xinu Approach, Second Edition. For computer architecture, you can start with Hennessy and Patterson's Computer Organization and Design and then Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach.

    pervognsen,
    @pervognsen@mastodon.social avatar

    @rudrabeniwal There's not many treatments of a complete system around but Wirth's updated 2013 book on Project Oberon is worth reading: https://people.inf.ethz.ch/wirth/ProjectOberon/. His updated edition of Compiler Construction is also good as a straightforward, practical antidote to the usual academic treatments: https://people.inf.ethz.ch/wirth/CompilerConstruction/

    pervognsen,
    @pervognsen@mastodon.social avatar

    @rudrabeniwal Beyond this, you just need to study the design and source code of existing systems while designing and implementing your own systems as you learn things whether from books or existing systems. It's a very long-term process. Good luck.

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