Suggestions for writing a programming language? [closed]

Answer 1

If you're planning on writing an interpreter or compiler, don't do it because you want to write the next big thing. Write it because you already have a purpose for it in mind or to learn. If you do this you may find that you've accidentally written the next big thing.

Answer 2

Dave Hanson, who with Chris Fraser spent 10 years building one of the world's most carefully crafted compilers, told me once that one of the main things he learned from the experience was not to try to write a compiler in C or C++.

If you want to develop something quickly, don't generate native code; target an existing virtual machine such as the CLR, JVM, or the Lua virtual machine. Generate code using maximal munch.

Another good option if you're writing an interpreter is just to use the memory management and other facilities of your underlying programming language. Parse to an AST and then interpret by tree walk of the AST. This will get you off the ground fast. Performance is not the greatest, but it's acceptable. (Using this technique I once wrote a PostScript interpreter in Modula-3. The first implementation took a week and although it later underwent some performance tuning, primarily in the lexer, it never had to be replaced.)

Avoid LALR parser generators; use something that saves your time, like ANTLR or the Elkhound GLR parser generator.

Answer 3

I'd strongly recommend looking at existing bytecode interpreters. If you can make your language fit into CIL (.NET) or Java (or even others such as Python or Parrot), you'll save yourself all the effort of making a workable supporting environment and can get on with experimenting with language concepts.

Answer 4

If you don't want to get into writing a compiler to reduce your language to assembly/machine, then your next option is to write a compiler to a byte-code language virtual machine, such as the JVM, PVM or .NET.

Of course, if you don't even want to do that - you just want to create your own "domain specific language", I would build it in Common Lisp. Lisp macros provide a rather straight-forward method of creating whatever syntax you want and parsing it into Lisp. And you don't have worry about byte-code or assembly. Of course, you need to learn Lisp.