18 Jun
2026
18 Jun
'26
10:13 a.m.
On Thu, 2026-06-18 at 15:38 +0800, Tom Hunter via cctalk wrote:
You missed the point. The compiler backend is emitting
assembly code,
so
you better have a very good understanding of the underlying hardware
and
the assembly language for the machine to successfully write a
compiler
backend for the architecture in question.
The IBM 1401 COBOL compiler wrote assembler (Autocoder) on a tape. Then
you had to mount the Autocoder assembler tape and assemble it. And it
included the input COBOL code as Autocoder comments.