Developer Builds Compiler from Scratch to Challenge Decades of Design Assumptions

A software engineer with eight years of compiler experience, including an internship on Intel's Compilers and Languages team, has embarked on a project to build a compiler from first principles. The project, called TIR, centers on a target-independent intermediate representation designed as the backbone of an end-to-end compiler infrastructure. Rather than reproducing existing compilers, the author aims to treat established design choices as hypotheses and justify every architectural decision from the ground up. TIR includes a C front end, optimization passes, and back ends targeting multiple processor architectures. The author is documenting the entire process in a series, covering both where the design succeeds and where its assumptions fall short.