How I wrote a self-hosting C compiler in 40 days

Getting to some of the final notes:

> ... I'd choose a different design than that if I were to write it again. Particularly, I'd use yacc instead of writing a parser by hand and introduce an intermediate language early on.

That's why I found the LALRPOP post by one of the Rust developers interesting. Writing your own parser generator is actually much easier than writing a parser by-hand (depending on the complexity of the language, here not that complex and still difficult), and I think it's more instructive than using a free or open parser-generator or compiler compiler. The downside is that it is less practical, because almost none of the important aspects of language implementation involve the parser.

Surely to write your own parser generator you will need to write a parser for your grammar language? So you are now writing that parser, and then your actual parser using your new grammar language? That can't be easier than writing one by hand.