One of my teachers at university kept repeating that you can't really call yourself a programmer before you've implemented at least one language. I don't know about that, everyone is entitled to an opinion.
What I do know is that it's one of precious few things in software that I still find interesting enough to bother [0]. I'm guessing part of the answer is that this is where you end up sooner or later.
And then we have the internet, which is a big part of the equation. It's easy to get numb, but I remember a time when information about implementing interpreters/compilers was VERY hard to come by.
It's all good from my perspective, we're barely scratching the surface of what is possible and there are plenty of good ideas left to rediscover in our history.
But I do wish that more designers would dare to step outside of the box more. Creating a language isn't about cherry picking features from existing languages, it's about finding better ways of solving problems.
What I do know is that it's one of precious few things in software that I still find interesting enough to bother [0]. I'm guessing part of the answer is that this is where you end up sooner or later.
And then we have the internet, which is a big part of the equation. It's easy to get numb, but I remember a time when information about implementing interpreters/compilers was VERY hard to come by.
It's all good from my perspective, we're barely scratching the surface of what is possible and there are plenty of good ideas left to rediscover in our history.
But I do wish that more designers would dare to step outside of the box more. Creating a language isn't about cherry picking features from existing languages, it's about finding better ways of solving problems.
[0] https://github.com/codr4life/snabl