I got tired of searching and never finding a programming language that fits my needs (and I suppose most good programmers feel somewhat the same way). Anyway, I do have an idea of what I’d like for a programming language, and I’d like to try to develop my own. I’m interested in information on how hard it is and how long it takes (I mean, to get a minimally useful language). I already know what resources I’d need, but I still feel like it’s almost impossible to accomplish something like that without dedicating myself full time (or having others help me, which I don’t think will happen).
Anyway — when I say “programming language” and “minimally useful”, I the core language ready, working FFI for calling C code, and an Emacs IDE at least as useful as Quack.
I’d be grateful for any experience reports…
Thank you!
There is a haskell tutorial where you write a scheme in what they claim is 48 hrs. I want to say Why’s potion took about two months but he wrote an interpretor and JIT compiler for it. So I would say if you know what you are doing it would take a week to a month or two depending on time and talent for a first useful release. Writing a grammar in antlr will take you longer to learn the tools than it will to write the grammar if you make it simple enough.