ECE-553
COMPILER CONSTRUCTION
Not in Fall 2026
Term
Overview
Feedback is mostly positive. The strongest signal is that students generally rate the course well. Difficulty runs on the high side even without a single dominant complaint theme. Best for students who can handle a demanding pace without needing constant hand-holding.
DepartmentELEC&CMP
Terms offeredSpring
Typical enrollment20–27
Semesters of data2
7.5
Hrs / week
29
Responses
47
Enrollment
62%
Response Rate
Evaluation Scores
Overall quality
Teaching, content, and experience combined.
4.5
Intellectually stimulating
Challenges students to think deeply.
4.6
Instructor effectiveness
Explains concepts and facilitates learning.
4.5
Difficulty
Higher means harder.
4.2
Feedback Analysis
Feedback Analysismedium
Analysis based on student evaluations
Based on 88 comments across 2 sections
Feedback is mostly positive. The strongest signal is that students generally rate the course well. Difficulty runs on the high side even without a single dominant complaint theme. Best for students who can handle a demanding pace without needing constant hand-holding.
Student Reports
How hard is the A?
Hard to get an A
Students repeatedly frame high grades as something you have to earn. This reads as hard to ace rather than casually easy, especially once the course pace or grading standards ramp up.
Homework Load
Heavy homework load
Homework load is one of the clearest friction points. Students repeatedly describe assignments, readings, or problem sets as time-consuming.
Lecture Load
Regular lecture load
Lectures matter here, but the evidence points to a fairly standard lecture burden rather than a course dominated by long or exceptionally dense lectures.
Strengths
• Instructor ratings are strong even when the comments do not cluster around one obvious positive theme.
Tradeoffs
• Difficulty runs high even when comments do not settle on one dominant complaint.
Best fit for
Best for students who can handle a demanding pace without needing constant hand-holding.
Watch out for
• A large share of the evidence comes from one instructor's version of the course, so this may not generalize cleanly.
Student Responses
Implementation of lexing, parsing, type checking, IR translation, optimization based on dataflow, instruction selection, and register allocation; Programming in a functional language (SML), along with some implementation details of features not seen in many common languages (parametric polymorphism & type inference, nested functions); General software engineering techniques such as abstraction, intermediate representations, iterating to a fixed point, and approximate algorithms.
Spring 2024 · Hilton, Andrew
Programming skills. Collaboration skills. Knowledge of compilers.
Spring 2024 · Hilton, Andrew
Components of a Compiler: Lexer, Parser, Semantic Analysis, Intermediate Representation, Instruction Selection, Liveness Analysis and Register Allocation SML/NJ and functional programming paradigm
Spring 2024 · Hilton, Andrew
iteration to fix point from O(mn) to O(m+n) things to develop garbage collection designs
Spring 2024 · Hilton, Andrew
My programming skills get improved. My understanding about compiler gets improved. My knowledge about machine architecture gets improved.
Spring 2024 · Hilton, Andrew
Rating History
Rating history
Error bars show \u00B11 std dev
| Term | Instructor | Overall | Difficulty | Hrs/wk | Enrolled |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spring 2025 | Hilton, Andrew 3.1Rate My ProfessorsQuality3.1Difficulty3.6Would retake31%Based on 23 ratingsClick to view on RMP → | 4.4 | 4.2 | 7.5 | 27 |
| Spring 2024 | Hilton, Andrew 3.1Rate My ProfessorsQuality3.1Difficulty3.6Would retake31%Based on 23 ratingsClick to view on RMP → | 4.6 | 4.2 | — | 20 |
Instructor
Hilton, AndrewELEC&CMP
Also teaches
ECE-551D PROG, DATA STRUC & ALGO IN C++3.9ECE-651 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING4.3