I forgot to say the most influential book for me are:
"Programming Languages: An Interpreter Based Approach" by Samuel N Kamin - though it says it's about Interpreters, it's really looking at how to implement language features for various languages. This makes you feel like you could do it yourself, because it explains each feature and gives example code. One of the first books I read on the subject.
"Types and Programming Languages" by Benjamin C Pierce. Totally opposite and quite heavy reading. Assumes you can do degree level set-theoretic logic - but this book basically tells you how to build a proper type system from a mathematical perspective. The concepts are key, so it's possible to read and gloss over the maths. Often academia has the future or bleeding edge hidden in research papers, so it's worth reading these also, even if the maths goes way over ones head.
As I mentioned, Lisp is a great place to start because it has a very simple lexical and syntactical grammar, and the semantics can be expressed in very minimally. I quick google search gave me: Lisp in Less Than 200 Lines Of Code
Don't research absolutely everything to begin with, it's too overwhelming a subject. The basics are covered in the "Dragon Book":
Lexical analysis (see flex, antlr, re2c)
Syntax/Parsing (bison, antlr)
Semantic analysis (you're on your own here, it's too language specific)
Type systems (if you're going static typing, which I would highly recommend)
Code Generation (see LLVM, it does everything you'd need)
Another thing I tend to do is read/use a lot of languages and steal... err... leverage... ideas. Most also have their compilers and libraries open sourced. Some interesting languages: Swift, C#, Kotlin, Rust, Julia, Scala, Clojure, Erlang.
Don't be daunted, the subject, like most, is quite deep and involved when you really look into it.
I forgot to say the most influential book for me are:
"Programming Languages: An Interpreter Based Approach" by Samuel N Kamin - though it says it's about Interpreters, it's really looking at how to implement language features for various languages. This makes you feel like you could do it yourself, because it explains each feature and gives example code. One of the first books I read on the subject.
"Types and Programming Languages" by Benjamin C Pierce. Totally opposite and quite heavy reading. Assumes you can do degree level set-theoretic logic - but this book basically tells you how to build a proper type system from a mathematical perspective. The concepts are key, so it's possible to read and gloss over the maths. Often academia has the future or bleeding edge hidden in research papers, so it's worth reading these also, even if the maths goes way over ones head.
As I mentioned, Lisp is a great place to start because it has a very simple lexical and syntactical grammar, and the semantics can be expressed in very minimally. I quick google search gave me: Lisp in Less Than 200 Lines Of Code
Don't research absolutely everything to begin with, it's too overwhelming a subject. The basics are covered in the "Dragon Book":
Another thing I tend to do is read/use a lot of languages and steal... err... leverage... ideas. Most also have their compilers and libraries open sourced. Some interesting languages: Swift, C#, Kotlin, Rust, Julia, Scala, Clojure, Erlang.
Don't be daunted, the subject, like most, is quite deep and involved when you really look into it.
Wow! Thanks a lot, Harvey! This is a great list of books. I really appreciate it. I'll definitely have a look at Lisp.