How would one create a programming language?

[iHammmy]

Hello,

 

Ive always been fascinated by the concept of programming.

 

Recently, I was thinking about how one would create a programming language.

 

Would he or she have to create his or hers programming language inside another language?

 

For example:

 

Someone would have made Python by using Java

 

I am not wanting to do this, I was just wondering

 

Thanks to anyone that can help,

 

- Harry

[minibois]

Hmm.. I have never actually heard of how they do it.. 

I know game engine and some other programs (like for example GIMP) are made with C.. But I am not sure if that is how languages are created too..

 

Usually languages only work in certain programs (for example, HTML on itself is pretty useless, but throw it in something like Chrome, Opera or FireFox and suddenly you have a webpage).

I think it could be done like that.

 

EDIT: sometimes languages are an edited version of another language. Like C#, C++ and many more languages come from C.

Some modified versions of languages might be easier, but maybe you can do less with it.

[Nup]

Hmm I thought about this the other day, and it kinda left me beat good question though. 

 

I know very little about coding. But do explain if anyone has an answer 

[werto165]

 

become jonathan blow. 

[espurritado]

well it's kind of complicated, you need a lexical, sintactical and semantical analyzer, you need a symbol table and you need a translator to turnyour high level commands to object code

 

i've got a class talking about this during this semester and a few years back (say 15-20) was one of the main parts of informatics, understand and program all this.

 

answering to your question, you can do it any way, obiously the first high level languages were coded with low level lenguages but if you can write something you can actually understand why write a bunch of comands using hexadecimal?

[colonel_mortis]

It depends. Interpreted programming languages like javascript (not to be confused with java) are just text files which are read by a native program (usually written in something like C++). To make an interpreted language, you just need to write an interpreter which will understand the commands and run the necessary native (C++) commands. This is pretty easy to do, but the performance is reduced as a result.

A lot of languages, such as C++, are compiled from the text directly into the binary representation that is interpreted directly by the processor. To make a language like this, you would write a compiler, usually using assembly (which itself is only a very slight abstraction of binary, and is the lowest level programming language aside from binary AFAIK). You don't really want to make a programming language like this unless you have a big team of people.

There are some languages, though I can't name any off the top of my head, which are compiled into another language. That new code is then fed into a compiler which converts it into native code. This is basically an intermediary between the other two - there's less effort than writing a binary compiler, but also slightly less performance (depending on your optimisations) than a binary compiled language.

[espurritado]

There are some languages, though I can't name any off the top of my head, which are compiled into another language. 

 java would be an example of this one, when you build a java program the .class files you get are just the java program tranlated into bytecode which is afterwards interpreted by the java VM

[xvantok]

Is it not done through binary coding?

[Art Vandelay]

For new languages, you just need to make a program that outputs an executable file  (for something like C) or some kind of runtime that can execute instructions (in the case of something like python or Java). You can do that with any language, though creating a runtime language using a language that already has a runtime is pretty wasteful.

 

Is it not done through binary coding?

the final file is binary, but no one directly code in binary anymore. Coding in binary is a pain.

[xvantok]

For new languages, you just need to make a program that outputs an executable file  (for something like C) or some kind of runtime that can execute instructions (in the case of something like python or Java). You can do that with any language, though creating a runtime language using a language that already has a runtime is pretty wasteful.

 

the final file is binary, but no one directly code in binary anymore. Coding in binary is a pain.

Well I mean whoever wrote the name of the sub forum does...

[Art Vandelay]

Well I mean whoever wrote the name of the sub forum does...

 

 

if you call this writing code... yes

.text:00401000                 dec     esi.text:00401001                 push    ebp.text:00401002                 inc     esi

I assembled the forum subtitle into an executable and analysed with IDA (it was faster than converting to hex and manually analyzing).

[flexin1981]

i thought that languages like python and C# etc are abstraction layers of assembly.

[GoodBytes]

At University, look for a class called Compiler Design.

This course focuses on you making your own programming language with it's own grammar (usually the professor will give you that, as that is massive amount of work to think about), and in the class you'll learn, using C/C++ or even Java, how to build a compiler for it, and have it execute. Complete with error detection.

It is a very difficult class, and time consuming. So don't have other heavy classes with it, and you'll do fine.