I have a series on my blog about writing a compiler in Python for a typed subset of Python 3. Might be a useful reference especially for the backend parts. There isn't really a standard lexer/parser in this compiler; Python can parse its own syntax out of the box using the standard library, so that part was free in this case. In the past for other projects I've used PLY for lexer/parser in Python. Source code Blog posts (each part assumes that you've read previous parts): Frontend/typechecker JVM backend CIL/CLR backend WASM backend LLVM backend In terms of more formal resources, you don't have to find a course whose language matches perfectly with what language you want to use. If you want to implement the compiler in Python, then finding a course that uses a language that isn't too different (something high-level that supports some OOP patterns like Java or TS) to implement the compiler should be fine. That way it would be easier to translate the concepts/examples into Python v.s. following a course that uses Rust or Haskell. More on reddit.com

Trying to bolt compilation and static analysis onto Python feels a lot like what Facebook went through with PHP/Hack. It's possible but it's like picking the deepest spot in the river to build a bridge. More on reddit.com

Generally, compiling means to turn some representation of instructions into some other representation. Usually this is from high-level source code into some low-level representation. Compilation is a separate step from actual execution — you can compile and not execute the result — and also isn't the only way to get your code to actually run. There is such a thing as an "interpreter", which is a program that reads source code and executes it directly without first reducing it to machine code. However, any interpreter is going to transform your source code in some way to an internal representation that it uses. Loosely, if the transformation is limited to basic reading and parsing, and doesn't involve translation of the instructions themselves into some other separate executable format, we call it interpreting and not compiling. It's not the most rigorous of distinctions. Python is a language with many implementations. The language is just a specification. Being "compiled" or not is a property of an implementation, not a language. So there are Python compilers, and there are Python interpreters. The main Python implementation, the one which you're using, is called CPython (because it is written in C). It doesn't fit neatly into an interpreted vs compiled distinction, because CPython does compile Python source code, but it does so into Python bytecode which it then "runs" (you could say "interprets") directly. However, many people say "compiler" to mean "something that compiles to machine code", which CPython doesn't, so they say things like "Python isn't a compiled language". More on reddit.com

Pycharm is fantastic. VS Code with the appropriate extensions will work well. Vim can be setup very nice too. You have lots of options. More on reddit.com