Life & fun · alternatives · 2026

24 alternatives to A toy interpreter for a minimalistic imperative language in 1.3k LoC

A hackable and extensible lexer, parser and interpreter for a minimalistic, imperative, C-like language. - bbu/simple-interpreter

This is a toy interpreter for a minimalistic imperative language, written in just 1.3k lines of code. It implements a complete lexer, parser, and interpreter for a C-like language with basic features. The project is… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. A toy interpreter for a minimalistic imperative language in 1.3k LoC launched in 2015; newer entries below may have overtaken it.

1
Small Clojure Interpreter▲143
Configurable Clojure/Script interpreter suitable for scripting and Clojure DSLs - babashka/sci
2019 · github.com · its alternatives →
2
A compiler and VM for a simple language, in 150 lines of code▲200
A complete compiler for a simple language (in less than 150 LoC) - 00_readme.md
2022 · gist.github.com · its alternatives →
3
Maybe Haskell▲60
See what it’s like to program in a language without null.
2015 · books.thoughtbot.com · its alternatives →
4GI
Going into freshman year, figured I should build an interpreter▲138
Hi all! I'm going into my freshman year, and figured that the best way to prepare for the intro to programming Racket course would be to implement my own garbage-collected, dynamically typed, functional programming language in C ;) Anyways... here's the repo: https://github.com/liam-ilan/crumb I started learning C over the summer, so I still have a whole lot to learn... Any feedback would be greatly appreciated! :D
2023 · its alternatives →
5
“Crafting Interpreters” chapter, control flow and Turing-completeness▲116
2017 · craftinginterpreters.com · its alternatives →
6
PlanckForth – Bootstrapping an interpreter from handwritten 1kb binary▲132
Bootstrapping a Forth interpreter from hand-written tiny ELF binary. Just for fun. - GitHub - nineties/planckforth: Bootstrapping a Forth interpreter from hand-written tiny ELF binary. Just for fun.
2021 · github.com · its alternatives →
7
Tiny – An interpeted dynamic langauge with inline Go native functions▲41
A lightweight programming language built with Go. Contribute to confh/Tiny development by creating an account on GitHub.
Jun 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
8
Bolt – A super-fast, statically-typed scripting language written in C▲261
I've built many interpreters over the years, and Bolt represents my attempt at building the scripting language I always wanted. This is the first public release, 0.1.0! I've felt like most embedded languages have been moving towards safety and typing over years, with things like Python type hints, the explosive popularity of typescript, and even typing in Luau, which powers one of the largest scripted evironments in the world. Bolt attempts to harness this directly in the lagnauge rather than as a preprocessing step, and reap benefits in terms of both safety and performance. I intend to be…
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
9
L2: An elegant untyped, unsafe, unhygienic programming language▲83
A minimalist type-inferred programming language with procedural macro support - murisi/L2
2017 · github.com · its alternatives →
10
Built a tiny interpreter from scratch in C to understand how they work▲5
Hi HN, I'm the author. I built this project for two simple reasons: I've always used higher-level languages and wanted to finally understand what's happening "under the hood" of an interpreter. I also wanted a real project to force me to "power up" my C skills, especially with manual memory management and reference counting. The result is ToyForth, a minimal interpreter for a Forth-like language, written from scratch in C, stack-based. I focused on making the code clean and understandable. It's broken down into a few simple parts: A parser that turns source text into a list of objects…
Nov 2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
11FF
Fully-featured Nil interpreter in less than 1 line of JavaScript▲115
2013 · ajf.me · its alternatives →
12LP
Learning Project: building an imperative language▲36
Hi! I am doing a learning project, attempting to build an imperative language (and interpreter). The end product will be useless for others, I just want to learn and better understand how to build imperative languages. :) If someone else shares this interest and want to give some good hints on good resources I would be grateful. Currently I am looking at an awesome text by Bob Nystrom. All suggestions and tips on resources are most welcome. I am very much a beginner in this, but I find this topic very fascinating. Mail me or post links here! Cheers! You can try a beta version Online at…
2020 · its alternatives →
13
Minimal Lisp in ~70 lines of Haskell▲76
GitHub Gist: instantly share code, notes, and snippets.
2011 · gist.github.com · its alternatives →
14
I wrote a BASIC interpreter in Go▲144
A BASIC interpreter written in golang. Contribute to skx/gobasic development by creating an account on GitHub.
2018 · github.com · its alternatives →
15IW
I wrote a technical history book on Lisp▲252
The book page links to a blog post that explains how I got about it (and has a link to sample content), but the TL&DR is that I could not find a lot of books that were on "our" history _and_ were larded with technical details. So I set about writing one, and some five years later I'm happy to share the result. I think it's one of the few "computer history" books that has tons of code, but correct me if I'm wrong (I wrote this both to tell a story and to learn :-)). My favorite languages are Smalltalk and Lisp, but as an Emacs user, I've been using the latter for much longer and for my…
Feb 2026 · berksoft.ca · its alternatives →
16
“Statements and State”, the next chapter of my book on interpreters▲141
2017 · craftinginterpreters.com · its alternatives →
17
Solid, a scripting language with a tiny VM▲63
A minimalist interpreted language, with a clean object model and a tiny VM. - chameco/Solid
2013 · github.com · its alternatives →
18CI
Cpi – Immediately compile and execute c++ program like a scripting lang▲65
Tiny c++ interpreter
2017 · treefrogframework.github.io · its alternatives →
19AP
A playground for in-browser interpreters▲79
2015 · fatiherikli.github.io · its alternatives →
20
Truck▲74
Dynamic toy programming language with a focus on simplicity
2019 · github.com · its alternatives →
21
A small programming language where everything is pass-by-value▲91
This is a hobby project of mine that I started a few years ago to learn about programming language implementation. It was created 95% without AI, although a few recent commits include code from Gemini CLI. I started out following Crafting Interpreters, but gradually branched off that until I had almost nothing left in common. Tech stack: Rust, Cranelift (JIT compilation), LALRPOP (parser). Original title: "A small programming language where everything is a value" (edited based on comments)
Jan 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
22
Fe – A tiny, embeddable language implemented in ANSI C▲143
A tiny, embeddable language implemented in ANSI C. Contribute to rxi/fe development by creating an account on GitHub.
2020 · github.com · its alternatives →
23LA
Lambduck, a Functional Programming Brainfuck▲70
What if Brainfuck was less like C and more like Scheme? The interpreter implemetation is pretty bad. It's not very fast, it's not very good, and it's probably not very correct. But maybe there's some vaguely interesting programs you could write with it! For example, the Y combinator: λf. (λx. f (x x)) (λx. f (x x)) is written as: \` \`1 `0 0 \`1 `0 0
2025 · imjakingit.github.io · its alternatives →
24
An Actually-Tiny Basic for Arduino▲24
A Tiny Basic: An Actually Tiny BASIC for Arduino. Contribute to trevorjay/atinybasic development by creating an account on GitHub.
2020 · github.com · its alternatives →

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