To the surprise of literally no one, I'm working on implementing a programming language all my own
Inspired by conversation at a recent Future of Coding event, I decided I’d write up a little something about the programming language I’ve been working on (for what feels like forever) before I’ve gotten it to a totally shareable state. I have a working interpreter that I’m pretty pleased with, but I don’t yet have an interactive environment for creating, exploring, debugging, and running code — I have this idea for a Smalltalk-flavored infinite canvas dev experience that’ll work in the browser. Hoping that’ll be ready soon(ish)!
Author’s note: Cutting in real fast from the future with an after-the-fact update! I pulled together a relatively simple, standalone playground for folks to explore Baba Yaga a bit more!
Meet Baba Yaga!
Baba Yaga started as a purely aesthetic endeavor. Like a beaver drawn to slowing the flow of a river, I had this idea that was haunting me about what I wanted a language to look like on screen and kinda worked backwards from there. To start, I wrote a few fantasy programs, and then started to think through how to get that code to run.
I have no intention whatsoever of Baba Yaga becoming anything but a curiosity and an exploratory project for me. Because of this, it is really, really biased towards the things I adore in a programming experience, including:
immutability
functional-first everything everywhere
minimal syntax to learn
some batteries included
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