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Thorsten Ball

Writing An Interpreter In Go Paperback – August 7, 2018

by Thorsten Ball (Author)

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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!"

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Print length

264 pages
Language

English
Publication date

August 7, 2018
Dimensions

7 x 0.6 x 10 inches
ISBN-10

3982016118
ISBN-13

978-3982016115

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Publisher ‏ : ‎ Thorsten Ball
Publication date ‏ : ‎ August 7, 2018
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Print length ‏ : ‎ 264 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 3982016118
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-3982016115
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 3.53 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7 x 0.6 x 10 inches
Best Sellers Rank: #399,199 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #643 in Programming Languages (Books)
Customer Reviews:
(221)

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.

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Sergey Ten
Well-researched book that democratizes programming language design for everyone
Reviewed in the United States on September 24, 2020
Format: KindleVerified Purchase

Just like the author says in the beginning, the book is intended to be a practical guide to programming language design, and fill the void between step-by-step tutorials and academic volumes. The book definitely delivers on the promise - it builds the interpreter from the ground up, from lexer to parser to evaluator, with tests written first to give the reader an immediate view of what's coming. I especially liked the fact that the author doesn't cut corners on writing test harness for the code, and doesn't abuse the "<such and such> is left as an exercise for the reader" phrase - that alone is an indicator of thoroughness and no-nonsense approach to writing. Also, be sure to download the "lost chapter" from the link at the end of the book - coming from the C/C++ background, this was an eye opener for me on what a good macro system can do.

Looking forward to reading his Compiler book.

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F. Huynh
Lots of code to read and very accessible writing.
Reviewed in the United States on June 6, 2017
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I've read many books and web articles on writing compilers and interpreters and this is one of the most accessible yet. The author describes step by step how to construct a Top Down Operator Precedence or Pratt Parser. The book contains a lot of simple elegant code that is a joy to read. The book contains just enough theory to help you understand , but not too much that you get overwhelmed. Recommend to any one interested in how parsers work. I would love it if the author writes a second volume focused on optimization or compiling down to native instruction.

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14 people found this helpful

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kdfuser
Very easy to follow, code works as advertised. Highly highly recommended!
Reviewed in the United States on April 12, 2020
Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
I have both the waiig and the wacig books. I followed both books and entered the code myself. It took me about 2 months to finish the books and code in sequence. (It's important that you follow them in sequence.)

The compiler book went much faster because the basics are the same as the interpreter book. Instead of tree-walk to eval, the compiler emits instructions for the vm to execute. Since early in my career I was an assembly language programmer. The vm's stack architecture is quite natural to me so the vm portion, though new, was easy for me to follow as well.

Both books are wonderfully written. Code in both book work as advertised. I enjoyed reading and following the code immensely.

Ever since I left school I wanted to someday write a compiler. I did it! :-) . I am thinking about re-implementing the programs in Python. That should be quite fun, I would think.

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8 people found this helpful

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Tyler Rhodes
A good book for getting started on writing an interpreter
Reviewed in the United States on May 17, 2018
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A good book for getting started on writing an interpreter. By the end of this book, you have a functioning little language and interpreter for the author's homegrown language called Monkey.

You learn the basics of lexing, parsing (using Pratt Parsing) and evaluation (tree walking) and how you can use these techniques in developing an interpreter.

This is a great book for getting started writing an interpreter and shows that it isn't some sort of magic. The code is written in Go, however, the techniques are covered in enough depth so that you can easily translate them.

I dock it one star because I felt the author could have left out writing all of the tests and left that to the downloadable code. While testing your code is a good thing, I feel that it's coverage in the book was a little too much. Leaving this out would have left a little more room to add more language features or perhaps show how to handle right associativity with the Pratt Parser.

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Dr Funk
Great accessible, hands-on learning approach
Reviewed in the United States on March 16, 2019
Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
The writing is very accessible, and the Pratt Parser implemented is thoughtfully constructed. You can build the whole thing in a couple of months as a side project, and although there are several parts that are not production-ready, the author generally notes these up front so you can go back later and improve them.

Also, I really like the fact that the interpreter is built TDD-style. That makes it easy to spot errors early, and also to extend the implementation painlessly.

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cprieto
It is what it says, a book about writing an interpreter in Go, and I loved it.
Reviewed in the United States on June 23, 2017
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This is probably the 9th book about compilers I bought and read in the last two years... And I loved it. The author is really honest with his introduction on why he wrote the book and what is expected to cover on it so you are completely warned from the beginning.

This is not a book to learn Go (there are better books about it) neither a book about how to design a programming language (there are many other academic books about it) or a book about different parsing algorithms (for that I recommend Language Implementation Patterns by Parr) but it is a book about writing an interpreter in Go, exactly as the title says, and I love it.

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16 people found this helpful

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Amazon Customer
Simple to follow
Reviewed in the United States on August 5, 2019
Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
So far so good, I love this book. It's simple to follow, and Thorsten's style of teaching is great.

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Charles Fout
Easy to read, but...
Reviewed in the United States on October 30, 2025
Format: KindleVerified Purchase
Go is easy to read. This instructional book is easy to read. The text even includes code that executes recursively and uses closures. But it leaves out simple yet crucially important things, like looping constructs (for/while) and modules (import, private/public).

The "Lost Chapter" covering meta programming is a nice touch, though. It's a separate, free chapter, and well worth your time.

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N. Danson
5 stars for the book, but 2 for the kindle formatting
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 24, 2023
Format: KindleVerified Purchase

The book is really good. I’ve written a few toy compilers and interpreters, but wanted to get an insight into how other do it without dedicating my life to compiler research papers.

To avoid copy/paste I took the code and verbatim copied to Rust.

The book is generally very good - not perfect but overall worth 5 stars. But on Kindle the code formatting is awful and very hard to read. Obviously I haven’t checked the paperback version but the code formatting makes the examples very hard to read.

So a good book and worth it, but shame about the code formatting

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Josh Weston
Worth every penny
Reviewed in Canada on July 9, 2022
Format: PaperbackVerified 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.

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Joel Thormeier
Great book for learning by doing
Reviewed in Germany on January 11, 2024
Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
I mostly got this to have a project to learn more about Go with. But generelly it's an excellent book that I can recommend as an introduction to both go and building interpreters. Personally, I understand systems best by working on them and this strikes the perfect balance between a theory laden dissertation and a trivial example. It's clear, concise and hands on. However, if you are mostly interested about in depth theoretical aspects of interpreters or already have the foundations this is probably not for you.

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Franck
Un tour de force
Reviewed in France on October 9, 2017
Verified Purchase
Ce livre réussi le tour de force d’aborder un sujet complexe souvent obscure et de le rendre limpide et accessible avec une facilité déconcertante.
Non seulement l'auteur ne triche pas (vous allez réellement écrire 100% du code sans outils tierce ou librairies spécialisées) mais vous allez le faire de façon extrêmement progressive.
Le découpage des étapes est tellement bien fait qu’à aucun moment vous ne devez absorber plus d’un ou deux concepts à la fois. Tout s’enchaine d’une façon fluide et logique. Lorsqu’une question germe dans votre esprit, la réponse apparait sur la page comme si l’auteur était dans votre tête !

A lire absolument.

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A. Hahn
Fantastic introduction
Reviewed in Sweden on November 19, 2023
Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
An introduction to interpreters for anyone

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An ambitious book that is concise in it's delivery

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5.0 out of 5 stars 5 stars for the book, but 2 for the kindle formatting

5.0 out of 5 stars Worth every penny

5.0 out of 5 stars Great book for learning by doing

5.0 out of 5 stars Un tour de force

5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic introduction

5 stars for the book, but 2 for the kindle formatting

Worth every penny

Great book for learning by doing

Un tour de force

Fantastic introduction