<story><title>Building a programming language in twenty-four hours</title><url>https://ersei.net/en/blog/diy-programming-language</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>avgcorrection</author><text>Hmmph. Try my build-no-programming language in 20 years instead:&lt;p&gt;- Be armchair-interested in programming languages&lt;p&gt;- Take some PL-whatever courses in college&lt;p&gt;- Read about PLs&lt;p&gt;- Read about progressively niche PL stuff…&lt;p&gt;- Get idealistic (get ideas)&lt;p&gt;- Read about the grueling design process of useful-in-the-real-world languages&lt;p&gt;- Eventually realize that There Are Always Tradeoffs&lt;p&gt;- Realize that the Tradeoffs are like two thousand parameters that might interact in super-weird and non-obvious ways&lt;p&gt;- Realize that a dozen super-competent PhD-wielders and multi-decade practitioners can easily spend a decade on developing the core of a language&lt;p&gt;- eh, why bother</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>feoren</author><text>I came here to say &amp;quot;can we worry about building programming languages in twenty-four years instead, please?&amp;quot;. Someone who has gone through your list is &lt;i&gt;exactly&lt;/i&gt; who I want actually building the next generation programming languages. Of course your last question is the best one:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; eh, why bother&lt;p&gt;This is absolutely the question you need a deep answer for. You need a problem that is burning you up and whose &lt;i&gt;only&lt;/i&gt; solution is a new programming language. This might never happen. If it ever does, you&amp;#x27;re the person to do it, exactly because of all the ups and downs and half-started ideas you&amp;#x27;ve thrown away. But you&amp;#x27;re right: the &amp;quot;why bother&amp;quot; stage is not to be ignored. It&amp;#x27;s the most important one.</text></comment>
<story><title>Building a programming language in twenty-four hours</title><url>https://ersei.net/en/blog/diy-programming-language</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>avgcorrection</author><text>Hmmph. Try my build-no-programming language in 20 years instead:&lt;p&gt;- Be armchair-interested in programming languages&lt;p&gt;- Take some PL-whatever courses in college&lt;p&gt;- Read about PLs&lt;p&gt;- Read about progressively niche PL stuff…&lt;p&gt;- Get idealistic (get ideas)&lt;p&gt;- Read about the grueling design process of useful-in-the-real-world languages&lt;p&gt;- Eventually realize that There Are Always Tradeoffs&lt;p&gt;- Realize that the Tradeoffs are like two thousand parameters that might interact in super-weird and non-obvious ways&lt;p&gt;- Realize that a dozen super-competent PhD-wielders and multi-decade practitioners can easily spend a decade on developing the core of a language&lt;p&gt;- eh, why bother</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>all2</author><text>I had to change the scope of my desires. I don&amp;#x27;t want to make the next Python. Not even the next Zig or Nim. I just like fiddling with compilers and interpreters. Someone else mentioned &lt;i&gt;Crafting Interpreters&lt;/i&gt; and I&amp;#x27;ll bring it up, too. I&amp;#x27;ve been following along in C# and occasionally come back to my C#Lox implementation and work through another chapter. It is quite a lot of fun.</text></comment>