Why SSA Compilers?

I like the style of the blog but a minor nit I'd change is have a definition what SSA is right at the top. It discusses SSA for quite a while "SSA is a property of intermediate representations (IRs)", "it's frequently used" and only 10 paragraphs down actually defines what SSA is

> SSA stands for “static single assignment”, and was developed in the 80s as a way to enhance the existing three-argument code (where every statement is in the form x = y op z) so that every program was circuit-like, using a very similar procedure to the one described above.

I understand it's one of those "well if you don't know what it is, the post is not for you" but I think it's a nice article and could get people who are not familiar with the details interested in it

> The reason this works so well is because we took a function with mutation, and converted it into a combinatorial circuit, a type of digital logic circuit that has no state, and which is very easy to analyze.

That's an interesting insight, it made sense to me. I only dealt with SSA when decompiling bytecode or debugging compiler issues, and never knew why it was needed, but that sort of made it click.

This post is frankly one of the most convoluted discussions of SSA I've read. There's lots of info there, but I'd frankly suggest going back and look at a paper on implementing it. I think I first came across SSA in a paper adding it to Wirths Oberon compiler, and it was much more accessible.

Edit: It was this paper by Brandis and Mössenböck: https://share.google/QNoV9G8yMBWQJqC82