Project Eia

Ever since I was 12–13, I've loved interpreters! (ATM I'm 16 y/o)
One of my friends recommended the book Crafting Interpreters (opens in a new tab) by Robert Nystrom which taught me basic foundational ideas and mechanics of an interpreter. Even before I discovered this book, I had spent a lot of days creating interpreters (which were not so good, but fun to make!)

How does Eia work

Eia is written in Kotlin, a JVM Language. Kotlin compiles down into platform independent Bytecode that is later executed by the Java Virtual Machine (JVM). JVM is implemented in C++.

So when you write code in Eia, there are three layers of abstraction the code has to go through to get executed.
This makes execution really slowww...
A fib(n) function which takes couple hundred millis to execute on Eia, takes a split second on Java, and not even few millis on C++.

This gives any form of compiled language an edge over purely interpreted ones like this one.

Fun fact: Python isn't a purely interpreted nor a compiled language. It's a mix where code is turned into Bytecode by the parsed syntax trees that is later executed by the Python Virtual Machine (PVM)

Source of enthusiasm

This is not my first attempt towards making a language. I've done many in the past. So initially, I was skeptical towards working on the project, thought couldn't make it much better after all those efforts. But honestly, I've learnt a lot in the process that was unimaginable just a couple of months ago.

Originally part of lang-jam hosted by HackClub! Also part of my Arcade <3, that gave me an immense boost of productivity and long dedication required.

This website aims to document all the features and working of Eia64!

Links

Main project repository: XomaDev/Eia64 (opens in a new tab)
Eia docs: XomaDev/eia-docs (opens in a new tab)
Eia Playground SSH: XomaDev/EiaAPI (opens in a new tab)