austrian1painter

Posted on Jun 26

My Own Programming Language W-Language v0.2

#programming

For the past few months, I've been building my own programming language called W-Language.

The primary goal of this project is to learn how programming languages work internally by implementing every major component myself instead of relying on existing compiler frameworks.

Version 0.2 has just been completed, marking the biggest update since the project began.

✨ Features

64-bit Runtime
Custom Virtual Machine (W-VM)
Custom Bytecode Format (WVM2)
Recursive Descent Parser
Lexer written from scratch
Abstract Syntax Tree (AST)
Bytecode Compiler
Bytecode Loader
Foreign Function Interface (FFI)
Integer Support
Floating Point Support
Boolean Support
String Support
Variables
Functions
Function Calls
if / else
while
return
Built-in print()

🏗 Architecture

Source Code
      │
      ▼
    Lexer
      │
      ▼
    Parser
      │
      ▼
      AST
      │
      ▼
 Code Generator
      │
      ▼
 WVM2 Bytecode
      │
      ▼
    Loader
      │
      ▼
 Virtual Machine
      │
      ▼
 Program Execution

🔥 What's New in v0.2

This release was almost a complete rewrite.

Major improvements include:

Full migration to a 64-bit runtime
Replaced the old runtime representation with std::variant
Improved Virtual Machine architecture
New WVM2 binary format
Improved parser
Improved code generation
Better runtime diagnostics
Cleaner project structure
Migrated from .h to .hpp
Better FFI implementation

📦 Technologies

The project is written entirely in Modern C++17.

Main concepts used:

std::variant
Smart pointers
Recursive Descent Parsing
Bytecode Compilation
Virtual Machine Design
Stack Frames
Runtime Value System
Binary Serialization

🎯 Why I Built It

This project is mainly for learning.

Instead of using existing compiler frameworks, I wanted to understand how programming languages actually work internally.

During development I learned about:

Lexical Analysis
Parsing
AST Construction
Compiler Design
Bytecode Generation
Virtual Machines
Runtime Systems
Binary File Formats

🚀 Roadmap

Planned features for v0.3:

Arrays
Objects
Additional operators
Expanded Standard Library
VM optimizations
More native functions
Performance improvements

📂 GitHub

The project is fully open source.

Repository:

https://github.com/austrian1painter/W_lang

Feedback, suggestions and code reviews are always welcome.

I'm still learning compiler and language implementation, so constructive criticism is greatly appreciated.

Thanks for reading! 🚀

DEV Community