Lab assessments in undergraduate course in Compilers for students with no prior knowledge in assembly

Abstract

Compilers is an important course in the curricula of Computer Science Faculties. A problem that we have faced while organizing the course at our institution was lack of prior knowledge of some students in the area of assembly programming and microprocessors. Due to the fact that the number of classes for the course was limited, we were not able to teach the necessary material on assembly programming. In this paper we present our idea for the lab project to be done by students through the course, that should enable them to grasp all necessary concepts in Compilers without a need of assembly programming. The idea was tested a few of years in a row, and most of the students managed to finish the project, and achieved better results in the final exams.