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Thorsten Ball

Writing An Interpreter In Go Paperback – Aug. 7 2018

by Thorsten Ball (Author)

4.7 147 ratings

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Writing An Interpreter In Go - Version 1.7 - Find out more at https://interpreterbook.com

In this book we will create a programming language together. We'll start with 0 lines of code and end up with a fully working interpreter for the Monkey programming language.

Step by step. From tokens to output. All code shown and included. Fully tested.

Buy this book to learn:

How to build an interpreter for a C-like programming language from scratch
What a lexer, a parser and an Abstract Syntax Tree (AST) are and how to build your own
What closures are and how and why they work
What the Pratt parsing technique and a recursive descent parser is
What others talk about when they talk about built-in data structures
What REPL stands for and how to build one

Why this book?

This is the book I wanted to have a year ago. This is the book I couldn't find. I wrote this book for you and me. So why should you buy it? What's different about it, compared to other interpreter or compiler literature?

Working code is the focus. Code is not just found in the appendix. Code is the main focus of this book.
It's small! It has around 200 pages of which a great deal are readable, syntax-highlighted, working code.
The code presented in the book is easy to understand, easy to extend, easy to maintain.
No 3rd party libraries! You're not left wondering: "But how does tool X do that?" We won't use a tool X. We only use the Go standard library and write everything ourselves.
Tests! The interpreter we build in the book is fully tested! Sometimes in TDD style, sometimes with the tests written after. You can easily run the tests to experiment with the interpreter and make changes.

This book is for you if you...

learn by building, love to look under the hood
love programming and to program for the sake of learning and joy!
are interested in how your favorite, interpreted programming language works
never took a compiler course in college
want to get started with interpreters or compilers…
... but don't want to work through a theory-heavy, 800 pages, 4 pounds compiler book as a beginner
kept screaming "show me the code!" when reading about interpreters and compilers
always wanted to say: "Holy shit, I built a programming language!"

ISBN-10

3982016118
ISBN-13

978-3982016115
Publication date

Aug. 7 2018
Language

English
Dimensions

17.78 x 1.52 x 25.4 cm
Print length

264 pages
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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Thorsten Ball (Aug. 7 2018)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 264 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 3982016118
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-3982016115
Item weight ‏ : ‎ 100 g
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 17.78 x 1.52 x 25.4 cm

Best Sellers Rank: #292,770 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #620 in Programming Languages Textbooks
- #967 in Programming Languages (Books)

Customer Reviews:
4.7 147 ratings

About the author

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Thorsten Ball

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Thorsten Ball is a professional software developer and writer.

His writing is a result of his love for what he calls "recreational programming", where he digs deep into various topics, hoping to come out the other end with a better understanding of what it is that we do when we program. For the last few years, the two topics that kept his attention the most are systems programming and programming languages.

He's also interested in the other side of doing professional software development: software engineering in a team, communicating through code, team and company culture and how to write great code together.

This fascination with programming and what it means to develop software, turned into his two books and various blog posts, podcast appearances and talks.

Customer reviews

4.7 out of 5

147 global ratings

5 star		79%
4 star		12%
3 star		6%
2 star		2%
1 star 0% (0%)		0%

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Top reviews from Canada

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Josh Weston

Worth every penny

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on July 9, 2022

Verified Purchase

I learned so much from working through this book, and not just about interpreters - about dealing with complexity, writing proper unit tests, writing a REPL, etc. I am looking forward to moving on to the next book in the series on writing a compilers.

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on August 29, 2020

Verified Purchase

Well written with no shortcuts taken. If you prefer to understand how interpreters work without any magic, then you'd find this book pleasureable.

To get the deepest understanding, try customizing some elements of the Monkey language to your own preference. For example, change "else" to "otherwise", and add support for comments and multiline strings.

Helpful

Top reviews from other countries

Sam Brown

Superbly written by an expert programmer

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on August 28, 2020

Verified Purchase

This book is excellent. It is well written, and the code extracts compile and work. That is not something I can say about all the computer books I have had over the years.

I am an experienced developer who has read many computer books, including ones on compilers and interpreters. This one is probably at the top of my list of well written computer programming books.

This book is different. It takes a practical approach. It uses a very modern language. It also uses modern compiler theory, for example incorporating Vaughn Pratt's innovative algorithm for finite state parsing. The author has clearly put in the necessary effort to get the prose and code properly proof read and edited. The writing style makes the subject interesting, and the code snippets actually work. Each section builds on the previous to iterate on the solution. I took the author's advice and coded along with the book, which means I got good practice in the Go language, and as I made minor mistakes and corrected them, I gained deeper understanding of the material.

This book is not really a book on compiler theory. There are other books way better for that. I have read some of those books and this book is a much better read. It keeps you interested and yet covers just enough theory to accomplish the goal stated in the title. It is by a programmer for programmers. There is plenty of code in the book, so it might not be for you if you don't like reading and writing code. I would highly recommend this book for those that do.

2 people found this helpful

G. Willoughby

It does exactly what it says on the tin!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on April 6, 2017

Verified Purchase

It does exactly what it says on the tin! You will learn to write a fully functioning interpreter in Go. I enjoyed reading this book and doing the exercises but I had a few gripes with the tutorial style. For example, you will write a piece of code only to be told it really doesn't do things properly and then have to re-write it to perform as expected. I don't really like this style of learning and would prefer to work with the finished function instead because it's not too hard to get your head round. Another grip was the omission of loops. I would have like to have seen a for loop implemented instead of a hashmap. Overall it's a good book and really shows you that writing an interpreter is really not that hard.

Kyle

Does what it says on the box, but could be a lot better

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on December 30, 2020

Verified Purchase

This book positions itself in between a blog post and an academic textbook, but it is more closely related to a blog post in its tone. A lot of the choices in the code don't make sense, but then that's very subjective and with all code there are many ways to do things.

If this had gone through a proper edit, it would be a great book.

ak

Pass Go and Collect 200 Monkeys

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on March 4, 2017

Verified Purchase

Really nicely put together and well written in a logical simple style that makes it a pleasure to follow. Thorsten illustrates some of the joy and elegance of programming small clever things, before we got bogged down in frameworks and enterprise jargon. Go is also a perfect choice for the underpinning. Especially like the fact he ignores obvious shortcuts like borrowing a parser generator and shows you how to roll your own.

One person found this helpful

Sue Court

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on December 23, 2017

Verified Purchase

good

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