In Computer Science when do you learn the fundamentals of high level languages and the methodologies a compiler uses to create assembly instructions? What is the primary book used for this course? Like, if you’re using Ada or Ghidra and trying to piece together what is happening in binary execution, I want to know structures to look for on this basic level.

I’m asking about the simple stuff like what you find in Arduino sketches with variables, type declarations, branching, looping, booleans, flags, interrupts etc. Also how these might differ across architectures like CISC/RISC, Harvard/von Neumann, and various platform specifics like unique instruction set architecture implementations.

I have several microcontrollers with Flash Forth running the threaded interpreter. I never learned to branch and loop in FF like I can in Bash, Arduino, or Python. I hope exploring the post topic will help me fill in the gap in my understanding using the good ol’ hacker’s chainsaw. If any of you can read between the lines of this inquiry and make inference that might be helpful please show me the shortcuts. I am a deeply intuitive learner that needs to build from a foundation of application above memorization or theory. TIA

  • marcos@lemmy.world
    3·
    8 months ago

    Oh, ok. You want to learn PIC assembly.

    Forth is a fun language, in that most of what one would study on compilers do no apply to it at all. You would need some book specifically aimed at Forth.

    I don’t think you will get anything useful from computer science material. You need focused, technical material, not theory.

    Anyway, a processor manual is usually called a “datasheet”. (E.g. https://ww1.microchip.com/downloads/en/devicedoc/35007b.pdf) That will have the hardware information (instructions, interruptions, I/O, embedded devices, hardware flags, register types, etc).

    The types, variables, and control flow are defined by the language, not the hardware. And again, whatever Forth gives you will be highly unusual and probably not covered on a compilers book. I don’t have a good book on Forth to recommend.

    (I hope somebody gets a better recommendation than mine, because honestly, now that I understood your problem, this is quite useless. Sorry.)