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That's the kind of projects I think about in the shower or when I'm procrastinating.

I need to hack on X. - Current editors suck, I should create an editor. - Current languages suck, I should create a language, and I'll build my editor in it. - Current OS suck, I'll write the OS in my editor using my language.

Meh, maybe another day, 2 hours later X is hacked in python using vim.

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I did this.

I built the hardware (Z80 SBC), wrote the OS (tiny single tasking Unix like UZI180), started to write an editor (like ed). Then I got distracted with something shiny and abandoned it.

Think I blew 200 hours on that and don't even have the source now.

next time build first a source control system (and/or a snapshotting filesystem)

My host machine was MSDOS and this was before I was aware of things like VCS'. I still have the ROM and board so I could possibly disassemble it.

The actual loss was caused by a disk failure and an untested backup system (my bad)

I've been doing this, working on the OS part now, eventually I'd like to write a small vi clone, a c compiler, x86 assembler and then maybe do an x86 clone in verilog/x86 emulator.

This seems so horribly complex and impossible. Amazed at the Gurus out there who can just decide to do this.

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