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Comment by bosch_mind | Hacker News Reader

To add onto this list (unless I missed it), I would recommend interpreter, compiler and assembler. An interpreter is a fun way to learn a new language and can be done creatively and artistically which allows you to exercise the art of programming in expressive ways. Lexing for optimal string manipulation and parsing, AST construction for fun ways of building and creating the grammar and interpretation which can be done any number of ways.

Also, it’s not as hard as it seems if compilers in college was your last attempt in this area.

- crafting interpreters

- writing and interpreter/compiler in Go

Both good books on the domain for an amateur compiler writer.

For lower level assembler and chip design stuff/logic gates etc. obviously I recommend Nand2Tetris

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Yea! And for the same amount of effort and difficulty I can recommend a couple as well!

- build your own kit car. Maybe start with something easy like a Ford GT with a V8 from a donor Mustang!

- build a kit airplane! Make it a jet for a little bit of extra challenge!

- make a rotary engine from scratch! Make your own materials!

- now a figure 8 propeller piston engine!

- create your own chip fab facility!

These articles are weird, delusional flexes.

As far as writing an interpreter or compiler are concerned, what you're describing is more like making one for an existing production grade language that's compatible with it's wider ecosystem.

These exercises are more like building a rubber band powered toy car. Useless (but not worthless), fun to build (if building things is something you enjoy), and something you can learn fundamentals of the domain from.

Also, I wish I could take a swing at any of what you mentioned for as little up front investment in money or space as giving these software exercises a shot, it'd be an incredible learning experience and awesome fun!

Well, my previous trolling aside, you can build an internal combustion (or electric!) go-kart type deal on a mid software developer budget. There are plenty of university students doing so for under a couple of thousand USD. You can also experiment with RC planes.

I do realize how relative money is - it's "nothing" to a FAANG dev (though they probably don't have the time), it's potentially years of savings for someone working in the the 2nd / 3rd world.

For sure! My current personal enrichment hobby of choice is machining metal. Tons to learn and great fun, but an engineer's salary definitely helps as you say.

It might sound humorous, but I’m not 10x programmer. An educational lexer and interpreter is something you can study and implement in 2 weekends. Assemblers are very very small amounts of code that spit out predefined binary from already made instructions (chip—8 is good for this). I think there should be MORE resources around simplifying what people think is incredibly complex. Production grade compiler tools like LLVM are incredibly complicated, but learning how the systems work isnt. While your comment is humorous, it’s toxic for those who actually want to understand fundamentals well

I agree with you bosch_mind. Building an interpreter is not hard, building a well optimized interpreter definitely is.

But that is not needed for an educational project. I encourage people to do things out of curiosity. Just ask yourself, what else is there that I could do that I haven't yet tried? (if you have the time)

It's not a flex or resume building or whatever (who cares about that?), it's a learning opportunity. I do think that sometimes there is a collective "this is hard" stance for things that we haven't had to do in a while because maybe they have been abstracted away or good solutions already exist. But the "this is hard" stance is actually harmful if it scares one away even though things turn out to be totally doable once one overcomes that mental hurdle.

So if you're not 10x, what's the point of you having built a mediocre educational lexer and interpreter?

Personal growth and enjoyment mainly. Understanding how languages work at a deeper level. Pure enjoyment of learning my craft as is any project I do involving programming outside of work.

When you understand your tools, you understand your job more. You also can appreciate things more from a different perspective.

Because its fun. I'm not a 10x (not even close), but I dabble in languages, parsers, interpreters, etc. for fun.

Flexes, maybe. Delusional? Not at all.

Here's a few stuff I've worked on for my own education over the years:

- Raft: https://github.com/eatonphil/raft-rs

- BTree: https://github.com/eatonphil/btree-rs

- A little Lua VM: https://github.com/eatonphil/lust

- A little Postgres clone: https://github.com/eatonphil/gosql

- A little Elastic clone: https://github.com/eatonphil/docdb

- A little amd64 emulator: https://github.com/eatonphil/go-amd64-emulator

I've never considered myself the "flexer" type, but maybe the tone of the blog post was a little misinterpreted.

PS: Great stuff you've shared. I remember in the past I've spoke with you about b-trees.

I think the tone was fine. :)

All of these ideas sound really fun

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