Readit NewsI’m also a sucker for 35mm in medium format so you can see photo content around the glorious sprocket holes.
Try Andrew Appel's "Modern Compiler implementation in Java/C/ML" or Writing a C Compiler (https://norasandler.com/book) which is much more recent.
Eventually, you'd want to hack GCC/LLVM because they are production-grade compilers.
I think hacking GCC/LLVM can be pretty challenging, but hey they are real, production-grade compilers and not just typical academic projects.
PHP? I don't know how widely it's still used, but I'd guess it's more widely used than Perl. Also, PHP is not "as bad" as Perl. It's much, much, much worse. It's Perl without the charm.
DHH does a great job of clarifying this during his podcast with Lex Friedman. The "why" is immediately clear and one can decide for themselves if it's what they're looking for. I have not yet seen a "why" for Zig.
Convincing enough?
Why? Is the mechanism that complicated? I'm pretty sure medium format SLR like Hasselblad or Rollei SL66 is more... ummm complex.