Warren Toomey's acwj repository documents a complete, hands-on journey to build a self-compiling compiler for a subset of C. The project eschews heavy theory for practical implementation, progressing through 64 detailed parts. It begins with fundamental concepts like lexical scanning and parsing, advances through complex features like structs and the C pre-processor, and culminates in generating ARM assembly code.

The tutorial's structure provides a rare, linear view of compiler construction. Each step explains the 'what' and 'why' with working code, covering operator precedence, control flow, functions, and type systems. The project also incorporates regression testing and explores design decisions for local variables and function calls. Toomey credits inspiration from Nils M Holm's SubC compiler, though his work is substantially original.

All source code is released under the GPL3 license, while documentation uses Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0. After 64 parts, Toomey halted the acwj project to begin designing a new language called alic from scratch. This pivot demonstrates the tutorial's ultimate goal: empowering developers to understand and create their own language tools by following a real-world, iterative development process.