I visited my mailbox this morning to pull out the exams that students have turned in. I leafed through the exams, and saw that the students were speaking at length and with passion and expertise about parsing, activation records, semantic analysis, code generation --- all of the courses one expects at a 5-star compiler banquet.

I was taken back to my days at Rice when I studied these topics with Ken Kennedy, of blessed memory. The thought that these students now know what he taught me gave me one of those rare I-Thou moments.

As the Olympic torch makes its way to Beijing, a torch of a different kind passes from generation to generation. It's worth stopping to notice this.