The course I did was organized perfectly with big parts of compiler boiler plate already written, and I only had to implement parser/lexer rules and the translation of language structures into assembly instructions. Also it was a compiler for a language designed just for this course with the intention of it being specifically easy to write a compiler for it and not programming.

Without this I can imagine it being a painful experience

One of them was a compilers course done by karpathy. It was pure joy and a great learning experience.

Also in my experience the joy of doing a course was much stronger correlated with the teacher's qualities rather than the subject itself.