nowfound

Life & fun · January 15, 2017

Crafting Interpreters – A handbook for making programming languages

Crafting Interpreters – A handbook for making programming languages launched on January 15, 2017 with 423 votes, #27 of 3,670 launches that month and more than 99% of that year's launches. The site was still online in September 2026, 9 years on.

Visit craftinginterpreters.com ↗Alternativestop 1% of January 2017

In plain words

Crafting Interpreters is a handbook for building programming languages. It guides readers through the practical process of creating language interpreters, from lexing and parsing to runtime execution. The resource is designed for software developers and computer science enthusiasts interested in understanding how programming languages work at a fundamental level. It combines theoretical concepts with hands-on implementation examples, making language design accessible to those without formal compiler training.

written from the facts on this page · September 2026

From the sources

Ever wanted to make your own programming language or wondered how they are designed and built? Crafting Interpreters contains everything you need to implement a full-featured, efficient scripting language. You’ll learn both high-level concepts around parsing and semantics and gritty details like bytecode representation and garbage collection. Your brain will light up with new ideas, and your hands will get dirty and calloused. It’s a blast. Starting from main() , you build a language that features rich syntax, dynamic typing, garbage collection, lexical scope, first-class functions, closures, classes, and inheritance. All packed into a few thousand lines of clean, fast code that…from craftinginterpreters.com

Does a similar job

all alternatives →

More life & fun this month

the category →

Source: Show HN post ↗

Launched alongside, January 2017

the whole month →