Golox: The Tree-Walk Interpreter

Another Lox interpreter, but this time in Go! This project is an adventure in learning Go by implementing tree-walk interpreter from Robert Nystrom's Crafting Interpreters

The Adventure Begins

When I first started Golox, I wasn't just aiming to build an interpreter—I wanted to uncover the magic behind programming languages. Plus, it was the perfect opportunity to learn Go along the way.

This is one of my favorite quote from the book:

Magicians protect their secrets not because the secrets are large and important, but because they are so small and trivial. The wonderful effects created on stage are often the result of a secret so absurd that the magician would be embarrassed to admit that that was how it was done.

This quote was mentioned in one of the earlier chapters of the bytecode implementation. It was "magical" at first, but as I delved deeper, it beautifully revealed how things are implemented, and suddenly, everything became so obvious! Just like how trivial the magic trick sounds, yet it still requires practice to perfect.

I believe that at some point, when these tricks become unfamiliar once more, they will transform back into magic again.

Highlights Along the Way

• Scanner: Implemented using a two-pointer method to track keywords and store them as tokens.
• Building the interpreter
• Adding features like functions and closures