This book is a book for beginners very clearly, whether to be a prerequisite course in confirmed programmer, can attack the book knowing nothing at compile time. The lexer and parser are just so well explained that once spent half the pad is still just learning the parser. (And I could melt like snow in the sun my hopes to learn some things seeing the end to get closer).
Fortunately there is a bit of material to the book when you have finished the game TDS. Only under the pretext that every bytecode is different, every strategy is different, examples vanish and the authors spread much more in theory than concrete implementation.
In other words: Each element of a compiler backend is then passed very quickly reviewed, they even ignore the SSAs (my big disappointment), optimizations such as eliminating dead code are flown, the calculation of the filling records presents only a single method, only the garbages collectors remains somewhat honored with a purely theoretical chapter without sample code but relatively complete.
In conclusion, if you know nothing about the compilation is a good appetizer, very didactic.
If you wish to deepen your knowledge of compiling backends, go your way.
