vibed/edu/.beans/edu-b73b--course-writing-a-lisp-to-c-compiler-in-rust.md

title	status	type	priority	created_at	updated_at	blocked_by
Course: Writing a Lisp-to-C Compiler in Rust	completed	epic	normal	2026-03-10T23:30:01Z	2026-03-10T23:30:03Z	edu-ylb8 edu-azf5 edu-n9ap edu-jzvr edu-g1r5 edu-16fy edu-n7zb edu-mmbr edu-tzzh edu-h3yx edu-3sww edu-4kkb edu-63ze edu-pyue edu-unus edu-nc61 edu-v0ud edu-y4e6

Course: Writing a Lisp-to-C Compiler in Rust

A complete self-guided interactive course teaching how to build a compiler from scratch in Rust using the nom parser-combinator library. The source language is MiniLisp — a minimal Lisp dialect. The compilation target is human-readable C.

Course file

edu/src/lisp-compiler.md

Section inventory

§	Title	Ticket
1	Introduction: What We're Building	e8da8b
2	MiniLisp Language Specification	a93829
3	Compiler Architecture: The Pipeline	3aeb62
4	Introduction to nom: Parser Combinators	5835e9
5	Setting Up the Project	3dc36b
6	Recognizing Atoms: Integers, Booleans, Strings, Symbols	685f5e
7	The Abstract Syntax Tree	a1a827
8	Parsing Atoms with nom	b6c9ad
9	Parsing S-Expressions and Special Forms	a4c9f8
10	Symbol Tables and Scope	d0b9f8
11	Checking Special Forms	6d40a7
12	The C Runtime Preamble	3e1250
13	Generating C: Atoms and Expressions	1eb794
14	Generating C: Definitions and Functions	cbc6e3
15	Generating C: Control Flow and Sequencing	de82f1
16	The Compilation Pipeline	58b37a
17	Testing the Compiler	8fa47a
18	What's Next: Extensions and Further Reading	1d16da

MiniLisp feature set

• Types: integers (int64_t), booleans (#t/#f), strings (const char*)
• Special forms: define, lambda, if, let, begin
• Built-in operators: +, -, *, /, =, <, >, <=, >=, not
• Built-in functions: display, newline, error
• Comments: ; to end of line

Explicitly out of scope

Closures, tail-call optimisation, pairs/lists, garbage collection, macros, variadic functions, floating-point. Each is discussed as a potential extension in §18.

Definition of done

All 18 section tickets are done and mdbook build succeeds with no 🚧 stubs remaining in the output.