Love such topics and articles in midst of AI topics/noise.

Took Dr. Thain's compilers class in college! It was the best. He's an excellent instructor, and the course project made me build a working C-style compiler step by step. I think the sample project here is pretty much the project we did; highly recommend following through the entire thing!

According to the introduction, the dragon book is at an advanced graduate level?

Just scannning the table of contents and I don't see any of the major topics of language design. It seems to be more like just "intro to compilers"

it wanders within a tight circle around C and its idiosyncrasies.

Good read. Impressive how ot sharpens past knowledge with great examples.

Sometimes I see people who design languages and build compilers, and I find them truly amazing. I once tried making a language myself because I was curious, but it was so difficult that I just settled for a simple C backend. The people contributing to LLVM probably know everything down to assembly generation. they're truly incredible.

Compilers teaching materials often skip practical concerns. This resource covers the fundamentals well — would be helpful to see more on optimization passes and code generation trade-offs.