Programming languages are fascinating. Learning how they work shouldn’t feel like fighting a dragon.
On Monday, August 3, 2026, I’m launching Tiny Interpreters, a new blog and newsletter about learning how programming languages work, one tiny interpeter at a time. We’ll begin by building the interpreters in Elm, one language feature at a time.
It’s for Elm developers, functional programmers, and anyone curious about programming languages who would rather begin with something small and understandable than confront an entire compiler at once.
Each interpreter will introduce one carefully chosen idea and follow it through the language’s design and implementation. We’ll build up our understanding gradually, allowing the deeper ideas to emerge from programs we can see, run, and reason about.
Tiny Interpreters is the path into programming languages I wish I could have followed when I first tried to learn the subject. It took me years—and one unsuccessful encounter with a dragon—to find that path for myself.
