How to create a language these days?

Question

I need to get around to writing that programming language I\'ve been meaning to write. How do you kids do it these days? I\'ve been out of the loop for over a decade; are yo

Answer 1

I've written two compilers now in Haskell for small domain-specific languages, and have found it to be an incredibly productive experience. The parsec library makes playing with syntax easy, and interpreters are very simple to write over a Haskell data structure. There is a description of writing a Lisp interpreter in Haskell that I found helpful.

If you are interested in a high-performance backend, I recommend LLVM. It has a concise and elegant byte-code and the best x86/amd64 generating backend you can find. There is an optional garbage collector, and some experimental backends that target the JVM and CLR.

You can write a compiler in any language that produces LLVM bytecode. If you are adventurous enough to learn Haskell but want LLVM, there are a set of Haskell-LLVM bindings.