Why I read it

This book was on my list for a long time. After building small toy parsers, I wanted to go all the way — understand what actually happens between source text and execution.

Structure

The book is split into two parts:

1. jlox — a tree-walk interpreter written in Java, focused on understanding the concepts clearly
2. clox — a bytecode VM written in C, optimized and closer to how real runtimes work

Each chapter builds something real. You’re never just reading theory.

Key ideas I kept

• Scanning is simpler than it looks once you think of it as a state machine
• Recursive descent parsing is elegant and readable — matching grammar rules to functions
• The environment model for variable scoping made closures finally click for me
• Bytecode compilation makes the jump from tree-walking feel natural, not magical

What it changed

After this book I started understanding C code differently. The clox VM chapters — managing memory manually, writing a mark-and-sweep GC from scratch — demystified a lot of low-level C patterns I’d seen but never fully understood.

Notes & Chapters

• Chapter 4 — Scanning
• Chapter 6 — Parsing Expressions
• Chapter 10 — Functions
• Chapter 19 — Bytecode Virtual Machine
• Chapter 26 — Garbage Collection

(Add your chapter notes as separate posts and link them here)