New programming language. Anyone done it before?

I have been developing my own programming language for several months now. I am just wondering whether anyone else has any experience taking on such a task?

 

I've fiddled with DSL's a little but most of the time it has been looking at creating API's/wrapper code to repurpose existing languages.

The reason I've done that is because I think developing your own language is pretty hard*.

I'm curious what your experience with this is though - I think it will be a pretty good indicator of whether you are making the next Scala or VBA.

*exact hardness correlates to purpose of language

 

I don't know whether I would describe it as hard, but more complicated. It's difficult to release what's sitting there in your head and put it into actual code. And especially code in a language that does not yet exist. And then you think ahead of what needs to be done, building a compiler and possible a translator of some sorts. Or possibly any required GUI stuff. Yep, complicated.

Regardless, I'm pressing ahead and doing what I can and learning as I go along and when I get on a role, I actually enjoy myself.

 

I'd like to know more.

What are you including in the language that will differentiate it from alternatives?

 

I've done a few CPUs in Verilog that have custom instruction sets, but they've been very basic (on the order of 16 - 64 instructions). Obviously there's a language associated with them, but it tends to be what makes sense from a hardware point of view rather than what will make them easy to program.

On the other hand, it's often good fun to see what you can implement in a very simple language with very limited capabilities.

 

I guess I tend to bundle things which are 'complicated' or 'difficult' as 'hard'. Not sure if we are mincing terms but I'd agree that designing and implementing a programming language is complicated and difficult (and to me at least, hard).

Good luck. Gotta admit I'm curious as to what your'e doing.

 

I assume it's this: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Simple-Dictionary-Language-SDL/340502006043088?ref=stream

 

Yep, that's it. I only created the FB page a couple of weeks ago, so that's quite new.

I have work to do today but will post some more information about my language tonight.

 

Taken from the Facebook page:

Exactly this! Have you ever heard anyone complain that they think programming is too complicated? I have. Too many times. My language is designed so that once the reader knows the basics of the syntax, they can update to the language syntax and recompile as required. Therefore, increasing the capability of Simple Dictionary Language.

 

My friend created his own assembly language called 'FastLogic'.

He then used it to create a basic operating system.

With all the programmers you'll meet in your entire lifetime, he'll be in the top 2. I say top 2 because it would be unfair to say number 1.

You just need a clear goal and purpose for your language.

 

Curious if you've got a solid codebase up, what license?

I've only ever read a few articles on writing a compiler (ASTs etc) and it is really interesting stuff.

 

Researching a few license as we speak. So I am yet to decide. I have all the paperwork printed, so I just have to get the time to sit down and read it all and note the differences between them. I have narrowed it down to four choices.

 

I haven't done so, but this is an interesting blog by a guy who is writing his own language called Epoch. Might be some useful info in there for you.
http://www.gamedev.net/blog/355-the-bag-of-holding/

 

You can make your life a bit easier by targeting something more generic and higher level like the JVM or .NET IL.

Any decent computer science degree will include a compilers course. That's where I got most of my experience. But the fun and interesting parts aren't into writing the lexer, parser, etc. but rather the optimisations and language features.

 

Bookmarked for later. Thanks. ;-)

 

So side-topic but can anybody recommend some resources for parsing?

This sounds pretty wacky. For assembly language I thought the nature of the CPU essentially determined the language?

 

I'm not sure what a "dictionary-based syntax" is but nailing down an unambiguous Turing complete grammar sounds pretty complicated to me. Yet you say users should be able to change the grammar on a whim? In order to make things less complicated?

Huh?

 

Could you give us a code example of what you had planned? Like a hello world?

It sounds like you're trying to actually implement functioning pseudocode. Is it a compiled or interpreted language?

 

This. It sounds absolutely impractical.

 

This will make absolutely no sense to anyone other than myself, but here you go:

Code:

<run> : ;execute #exact#; :: ;327211679