I’m a High School Student Building a Programming Language on Android

Anubhav Ghoshal — Sat, 30 May 2026 13:56:20 +0000

This post was formatted and re-phrased using AI, but was written by me originally. Please do not quit because I used AI to make the post better.

1. Introduction

Hi, I’m Anubhav Ghoshal, a 16-year-old developer from Jharkhand, India.

I’m currently building a programming language called San, entirely on an Android device using a Linux environment. This is a personal learning project focused on understanding how compilers and interpreters work from the ground up.

2. San — My Programming Language

San is named after the Korean word for mountain, something I’ve always been drawn to.

It is a dynamically and strongly typed language with a tree-walking interpreter architecture:

Lexical Analysis (Lexer)
Recursive Descent Parser
Abstract Syntax Tree (AST)
Tree-Walking Interpreter

The design is influenced by languages like Rust, Go, Python, and C, focusing on clarity and explicit control.

Here's the GitHub repository: https://github.com/anubhav-1207/san

Current design features:

Explicit mutability vs immutability
Explicit reassignment rules
Short, minimal keywords
Conventional syntax style (familiar structure)
Optional semicolons

3. Development Environment

San is being built entirely on an Android device using a Linux environment (proot setup).

This is a constraint-driven setup, but it still supports:

Code editing
Running interpreter tests
Iterative language development

The goal is not convenience, but learning how language internals actually work under real constraints.

4. Learning Journey

My early exposure to programming started in school, but it was initially limited to basic concepts like input/output, loops, and conditionals.

Later, I revisited programming more seriously and started understanding:

How variables actually work in memory
Why programming languages exist
How interpreters and compilers execute code
Why errors cannot always be “auto-fixed” by the language

That shift is what eventually led me toward building my own language instead of just using existing ones.

5. Building Alone & Learning Process

This project is entirely self-driven.

I did not have direct mentorship in compiler development, so I relied heavily on:

Documentation
Experimentation
AI-assisted explanations while learning concepts

However, all implementation decisions and code are written and understood by me, and I often rebuild components from scratch to ensure I truly understand them.

6. What San Includes Right Now

Basic lexer implementation
Parser with recursive descent approach
Immutability checks
AST generation
Early interpreter logic

7. What’s Next

Better error handling
Standard library basics
Language stability improvements

8. Closing

San is still in early development, but the goal is simple:

to deeply understand how programming languages work by building one from scratch.

Feedback is welcome.

DEV Community: Anubhav Ghoshal