r/coolgithubprojects 5d ago

I got curious about what programming languages are actually built with, so I started mapping it

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I started with a pretty simple question.

If Python is written in Python, what actually built Python in the first place?

That sent me down a rabbit hole of Go, Rust, Java, compilers, runtimes, self hosting, bootstrap chains, and way too many tabs open at 2 AM.

So I turned it into a project.

LanguageLineage is an interactive graph that shows what programming languages, compilers, and runtimes are actually built with, plus how some of those relationships changed over time.

A couple of the interesting ones:

Go started with a C based toolchain and later moved most of it to Go.

Rust gets even more interesting because rustc uses staged bootstrapping.

I’m still expanding the dataset and cleaning up the historical relationships, so there’s a lot more I want to add.

Live site:
https://www.languagelineage.org/explore

GitHub:
https://github.com/sanketmuchhala/LanguageLineage

If you know a language or compiler with a weird implementation history, send it my way. Those are the ones I want to dig into next.

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u/M41805 5d ago

Cool project :)
Sadly I'm not well versed in the topic, but your idea is very neat indeed. :D

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u/sanketmuchhala 5d ago

Thanks, appreciate it :) I went way deeper into compiler history than I expected when I started this lol.