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Language Design
2023

Rudito

An assembly-like REPL language built from scratch in Python

PythonInterpreterAssemblyREPL

Overview

Rudito is an assembly-like REPL language built entirely in Python — a from-scratch exercise in understanding how interpreters and low-level instruction sets work.

Why Build It

Not because the world needed another language, but because understanding how interpreters work requires building one. Rudito was an exercise in working through tokenization, parsing, instruction execution, and state management without reaching for any library that would abstract away the interesting parts.

Design

  • Assembly-like syntax — low-level instruction sets rather than high-level abstractions
  • REPL interface — interactive execution for immediate feedback
  • From-scratch implementation — no parser generators or framework dependencies
  • Python host language — focused on interpreter concepts rather than performance optimization

What I Learned

Building Rudito sharpened my understanding of how computers actually execute instructions — the gap between source code and machine behavior that most developers never need to think about, but that makes everything else make more sense once you do.