> have no need for C and am interested in interpreters and compilers
But you do have a need for it, because it’s the lingua franca of conversations about compilers and interpreters… as you’ve just found out with this course.
Like saying you want to work in the Vatican but you have no need for Latin.
> because it’s the lingua franca of conversations about compilers and interpreters
There are many materials, compilers, and interpreters that use ocaml and haskell, for example. C isn't the only one. That's why I'd prefer pseudo code instead of C, so that I could use this book without learning a specific language only for it.
This doesn't make any sense. Even you knew the C calling convention, but not C, where are you going to get documentation for system calls that doesn't use C code? The Linux, macOS, etc documentation uses C.
Reading the headers and prototypes in the man pages doesn't require "knowing" C. You just need to know the very simple subset of C's syntactical rules and the calling conventions. Anyway, reading C is far easier than writing C, most popular languages use the same syntax and operators.
> I don't know what that has to do with learning about compilers and interpreters.
Compilers and interpreters, unless they're running on bare metal, which is very niche, talk to the operating system using something called 'system calls' to ask for resources that they can't provide themselves, like virtual memory space and IO. These system calls are documented in C.
For example I wrote a Ruby compiler in Ruby, but I still need to know about the mmap system call, which is documented in C, to allocate my memory.
Now I can finally reply: that makes sense, and in hindsight is quite obvious, thanks. My general lack of knowledge in this area is a part of why I'd like to study it more, but preferably I'd like to use a language I'm already comfortable with. C is just very far removed from everything I have use for and am interested in.
> Maybe... MAYBE you don't have to read this book.
Where did I say I have to read it or that the author should learn another language? Nowhere. I said I wish it wasn't using C so that I could read it more easily.
But you do have a need for it, because it’s the lingua franca of conversations about compilers and interpreters… as you’ve just found out with this course.
Like saying you want to work in the Vatican but you have no need for Latin.