chris:
I plan to give a course in compiler construction, using Haskell as the implementation language (not as source or target language).
Something along these lines: 1. combinator parsers (Parsec), 2. simple interpreter (arithmetical expressions) 3. add algebraic data types, functions 4. type checker 5. code generator. Ideally, 2..5 would be using the very same tree traversal code and just change the monad for evaluation.
Any comments appreciated. Have you given such a course? Taken?
At Utrecht University, they teach excellent courses on exactly this subject, using Haskell. The course webpage [1] is probably a useful resource for you, as it shows exactly what we were thought (I participated in the course last year). We made heavy use of Utrecht's Attribute Grammar Compiler [2], which is a pre-processor for Haskell that allows you to very easily build programs using an attribute grammar. This proved to be a really nice way to do the tree transformations. I very much liked the idea of attribute grammars, but I personally don't like pre-processors very much.
Also, we targeted Simple Stack Machine as a platform. This is an assembly-like language that has a graphical interpreter, so you can actually see your code, do single-stepping, see your stack, etc. It proved to be quite useful. As a student, I it added a lot of educational value, but a real language would also be cool (e.g. Harpy [4]).
And Language.C http://hackage.haskell.org/cgi-bin/hackage-scripts/package/language-c