I Built My Own Programming Language at 19 – Introducing Akro

Ankit bishnoi — Wed, 06 May 2026 07:38:12 +0000

Hi DEV community! I'm Ankit Bishnoi, 19 years old from India, and I just
released my first major open source project — Akro, a programming language
I built from scratch.

Why I built Akro

I was frustrated with existing languages:

Python is simple but slow
Go is fast but verbose
JavaScript is everywhere but messy

So I spent months building Akro to combine the best of all three.

What Akro looks like


akro
fn main {
    name := "World"
    say "Hello, {name}!"

    nums := [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
    total := reduce(nums, fn(a, b) { return a + b }, 0)
    say "Sum = {total}"

    for i in 0..5 {
        say "i = {i}"
    }
}
Key Features
Type inference — like Rust/Go

x := 10
name := "Akro"
pi := 3.14
String interpolation — supports full expressions

say "Hello, {name}!"
say "1 + 1 = {1 + 1}"
say "Sum = {sum(nums)}"
Pattern matching

match score {
    case n if n >= 90 => say "A grade"
    case n if n >= 80 => say "B grade"
    default           => say "F grade"
}
Transpiles to JavaScript — write Akro, run in browser

akro transpile app.ak
# → app.js (ready for browser)
Error handling

try {
    result := divide(10, 0)
} catch(e) {
    say "Error: {e}"
}
Structs with methods

struct Point {
    x: int
    y: int
}

impl Point {
    fn distance(self) -> float {
        return sqrt(self.x ** 2 + self.y ** 2)
    }
}

p := Point(3, 4)
say p.distance()  // 5.0
How it's built
The interpreter is written in Go:

Hand-written lexer
Recursive descent parser
Tree-walking interpreter
JS transpiler (AST → JavaScript)
40+ built-in functions
Install
npm install -g akro-lang
akro run hello.ak        # Run a file
akro repl                # Interactive shell
akro transpile app.ak    # Convert to JavaScript
akro version             # Show version
Links
GitHub: https://github.com/ankitkhileryy/akro
npm: https://www.npmjs.com/package/akro-lang
This is my first major open source project. I'd love honest feedback — what's missing, what could be better, and what would make you actually use a new language.

Thanks for reading!

— Ankit Bishnoi, 19, India

DEV Community: Ankit bishnoi

I Built My Own Programming Language at 19 – Introducing Akro

Why I built Akro

What Akro looks like