Project Scope
Language design is the ultimate exercise in structural thinking. I built the jlox interpreter, a complete implementation of the Lox language including everything from raw string scanning to a runtime environment that supports dynamic inheritance and high-order functions.
Technical Deep Dive
The Front-End & Middle-End
- Recursive Descent Parser: Handles operator precedence and associativity for a complex grammar including nested classes and ternary logic.
- Semantic Resolver: A static analysis pass that resolves variable bindings to ensure lexical scoping is preserved, preventing common bugs related to closures.
- Dynamic Typing: Implemented a flexible object system that supports late binding of methods and instance fields.
What I Learned
This project demystified the "magic" of programming languages. By handling the nuances of garbage collection (via the host JVM), error reporting, and the trade-offs between performance and code clarity, I gained a fundamental understanding of how systems software operates beneath the syntax.