Contributing the Go Compiler: Adding New Tilde (~) Operator
Compilers have always had challenges to be solved, even today. Go is not so different too. There are so many things to do, so many problems to solve, so many features to implement… That’s why there is no such thing as “OK, this compiler is fully completed.”. It is almost impossible to say. In these years, we are actually so lucky that we have the opportunity to witness how legacy compiler structures are being restructured, improved, and increased efficiently together with the applying of modern approaches and solutions.
My obsession with compilers began while trying to write a simple memory reader with AutoIt for Silkroad Online. Something was somehow working perfectly integrated with the grace of God. So, how do they do it? I knew it would take me years to answer this question. But, it shouldn’t have been left unanswered. There are so many things to learn before digging into compilers. Missing or not knowing any of this information may be a major obstacle to our learning process. From CPU scheduling to Memory management, from logic design to instruction set architecture… Remember that we are trying to climb an enormous tree with an infinite number of branches. The soil of this tree is physics, obviously. I have learned that I still have a lot to learn.
Especially in the last two years, I had the opportunity to think a lot about compilers due to the pandemic. I have read many articles, papers, took a lot of notes, lot of trying. Monkey, which is one of the sources that inspired me. Do you like Monkey? Thorsten Ball did. Somehow, I came across an excellent book called “Writing A Compiler In Go”. After implementing the whole book in Rust, I immediately found the opportunity to clone the Go source code to examine further and strengthen the knowledge. In this learning process, an idea came to my mind that could answer questions such as “What have I learned?, What will I learn?, What I would like to learn?” and that I would enjoy sharing what I learned with you. Then I tried to write this article as much as I could. Do not forget to bring your coffee and background music with you. It is going to be a bit long journey.
