Modern Compiler Implementation in ML Book

Appel's stated goal in writing this book was, rather than to provide a laundry list of compiler algorithms that could potentially be used to implement a compiler, to use the algorithms that now dominate modern compilers. His thorough and authoritative approach starts with building a complete working compiler in the first half of the book before exploring deeper specialized topics in the last half of the book. Each chapter comes with example ML code from the chapter along with programming exercises which build off of the chapter's code so that at the end you have built a working optimizing compiler.

The book is an enjoyable read the whole way through. I particularly enjoyed the chapters on Instruction Selection, Register Allocation, Functional Languages, Loop Optimizations, and the Memory Hierarchy. This book gave me a new appreciation for how sophisticated a compiler's job is. If you're looking for an introduction or refresher on compilers, start with this book.