Thanks! FWIW I'm not new to CS, I'm just coming from an interdisciplinary masters where the principal faculty side was music, while for the PhD those will be flipped. I am, however, new to compilers and interpreters... but I am talking about over the time span of a PhD so this is a multi-year worth of work question. I will be taking courses on compilers but would like to be studying the topic ahead of the course.