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I write a blog about the design of C#, VB, VBScript, JavaScript and other languages and tools; if this subject interests you, check it out. http://blogs.msdn.com/ericlippert

I write a blog about the design of C#, VB, VBScript, JavaScript and other languages and tools; if this subject interests you, check it out. http://blogs.msdn.com/ericlippert (historical) and http://ericlippert.com (current)

They don't just appear. Languages are designed like any other product, and their compilers and tools are built like any other software product: one line of code at a time.

They don't just appear. Languages are designed like any other product: by carefully making a series of tradeoffs amongst competing possibilities. The compilers and tools are built like any other professional software product: by breaking the problem down, writing one line of code at a time, and then testing the heck out of the resulting program.

And if you're looking for a job doing this stuff when you're older, consider coming to Microsoft as a college intern and trying to get into the developer division. That's how I ended up with my job today!

In particular you might find this post interesting; here I list most of the tasks that the C# compiler performs for you during its semantic analysis. As you can see, there are a lot of steps. We break the big analysis problem down into a series of problems that we can solve individually.

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ericlippert/archive/2010/02/04/how-many-passes.aspx

Finally, if you're looking for a job doing this stuff when you're older then consider coming to Microsoft as a college intern and trying to get into the developer division. That's how I ended up with my job today!