This course teaches students about compilers and how to develop them. The course is based around a project where participants build a compiler for a small programming language called Javalette.

Javalette is an imperative language, a subset of C and of Java. The finished compiler includes a frontend (lexer, parser and type-checker) and at least one backend, generating LLVM code. Optional extensions include source language extensions and a backend targetting x86 assembly.