I recently replaced my 24 volt HVAC control transformer. The outside unit started up including the air handler and ran for maybe 10 minutes. After the units shut down I noticed that the transformer was hot to the touch and no longer is working.

What causes this and how can I fix it?


Question: Developing a dynamic language
Answer: First learn about implementing interpreters. I recommend PLAI (Programming Languages: Application and Interpretation). It gets to the meat of interpretation quickly without dwelling overlong on syntax. 

For your language, you'll be able to reuse the compiler's front-end (parser, mostly) and run-time library (GC, data structures, primitive operations, etc).

Of course, you can also implement a dynamic language with a compiler that produces code that manipulates (some of) the same data structures that you would use in an interpreter. For example, in an interpreter you might implement global variables as a string-indexed hash table. In a compiler, you would compile global variable references into the code that does the lookup using the same table. In contrast, you could compile lexical variables into a more efficient representation ("native" arguments and closure structure references).