Language Design
So, you want to design your own language? Of course you do. Or perhaps you are taking a class and are being forced to create a programming language under penalty of a bad grade. What kinds of things do you need to know?
Designing a Language
Of course you want to design (and implement!) your own programming language! It’s fun. It’s creative. It’s empowering.
How do we do it? In a nutshell, the process is iterative, cycling between four phases:
Doing the phases over and over is important; for example, while writing the compiler, you may be like “woah this is impossible” and then realize “oh shoot this part of the language wasn’t designed right!”
Prerequisites
It helps to be experienced. If you’re not, that’s okay, actually—you might get lucky!
But don’t mistake creativity for luck that shows up without pre-existing knowledge. The most creative people are those with a lot of knowledge and experience. So you should still study and practice!
Your success as a language designer will be massively aided by knowledge in three main areas:
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