Ask HN: What's a starting point for learning how to write programming languages?

Absolutely not for a markdown parser, which is what the author is asking about to get started

Chris Lattner, the creator of Swift has a nice walkthrough for making a small language called Kaleidoscope http://web.cs.ucla.edu/classes/spring08/cs259/llvm-2.2/docs/...

Learn the mechanics of compiler construction first - that'll inform everything about your language, and is a prerequisite to actually building something other people can use. I'd recommend The Dragon Book [1], SICP [2], and Modern Compiler Implementation in ML [3] for this.

After that, it's a question of where you want to go with your language, and what distinguishing features you'd like it to have relative to other languages. Languages which just change some syntax and keywords but otherwise look like C are common, but they tend not to get usage beyond their creators. Much of the academic research lately is about type systems (TAPL has already been mentioned) - there's research into dependent types, effect typing, total functional programming, linear types already made it into Rust's borrow checker, etc.

However, many of the worst problems in industry - dependencies, versioning, smoothly migrating from a prototype to robust production code, code navigation, security, parallelization & distribution, the memory hierarchy - have gotten relatively little attention in academic research, and are desperately awaiting solutions. If you have some industry experience, it may be worth trying to imagine how you might fix these problems if you were allowed to change the programming language at will.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compilers:_Principles,_Techniq...

[2] http://web.mit.edu/alexmv/6.037/sicp.pdf

[3] https://www.amazon.com/Modern-Compiler-Implementation-Andrew...

I highly recommend Norvig's (How to Write a (Lisp) Interpreter (in Python)) as a very short, practical introduction to implementing a language. http://norvig.com/lispy.html

There's also a followup article implementing additional data types and tail call optimization. http://norvig.com/lispy2.html

A Forth or a Lisp are simple tasks for an experienced programmer, and even basic ones are really satisfying imho. Seeing simple constructs work in an hour of coding really feels great. I implemented more complex languages (with types) for work which were more like DSLs but in languages less suited for the type of DSL we required, but I find most pleasure doing little Forth (like [1]) or Lisp likes when I am waiting for hours (in a plane for instance). It is like playing games for me. I write them on my phone or iPad.

I would recommend a lot of books here as well for a solid base and giving you the background needed to write more complex languages including static types, compilers, JITs and VMs. But for me, because I really do not have that much time, that would stretch over too long time and I lose interest, so I stick to things I know I can finish (or rather, get working and achieve something a previous incantation did not achieve; smallest, simplest, fastest etc).

[1] https://gist.github.com/tluyben/16ee2645c4c8aed813005d51488d...