How do you program a programming language?

Question by Josh H:

How do you program a programming language?

Obviously you have to start with a base language so wouldn't every programming language just be a dialect of the first? To clarify: How could they have made Perl without using another programming language to program Perl's functionality?




Best answer:

Answer by James
I have often pondered this question myself... I have no REAL knowledge about it, so this is just speculation:

A programming language is basically just a system for converting words/commands that we can understand (if x then ....) into commands the computer understands. I assume that the ORIGINAL language was written purely in binary, and then somehow used to branch off into other languages. All modern languages are probably written in other low-level languages, but I am not positive.

These are the questions that keep me up at night =)

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