Chapter 1: Why Build Another Programming Language?
This book will show you how to build your own programming language, but first, you should ask yourself, why would I want to do this? For a few of you, the answer will be simple: because it is so much fun. However, for the rest of us, it is a lot of work to build a programming language, and we need to be sure about it before we make a start. Do you have the patience and persistence that it takes?
This chapter points out a few good reasons for building your own programming language, as well as some situations where you don't have to build your contemplated language; after all, designing a class library for your application domain might be simpler and just as effective. However, libraries have their downsides, and sometimes only a new language will do.
After this chapter, the rest of this book will, having considered things carefully, take for granted that you have decided to build a language. In that case, you should determine some of the requirements for your language. But first, we're going to cover the following main topics in this chapter:
- Motivations for writing your own programming language
- The difference between programming languages and libraries
- The applicability of programming language tools to other software projects
- Establishing the requirements for your language
- A case study that discusses the requirements for the Unicon language
Let's start by looking at motivations.
