Answers

The following answers sketch some possible solutions to the questions at the end of each chapter; these are provided for your reflection.

Chapter 1

1. It is much easier to generate C code than to generate machine code, but the resulting code may be larger or slower than native code, causing a performance cost. A transpiler depends on an underlying compiler that may be a bit of a moving target, but if the underlying compiler is highly portable, the transpiler will be far more portable than a compiler that generates native code.
2. Lexical, syntax, and semantic analysis, followed by intermediate and final code generation.
3. Classic pain points include input/output being overly difficult, especially on new kinds of hardware; concurrency; and making a program run across many different operating systems and CPUs. One feature that languages have used to simplify input/output has been to reduce the problem of communicating with new hardware via a set of strings...