Eight weekends, eight builds

Write a Shell in C (brennan.io) · Stephen Brennan

Do: the shell itself; pipes and redirection are a bonus.

The smallest build here: fork, exec, wait. It shows what every program you start actually costs.

(How to Write a (Lisp) Interpreter (in Python)) (norvig.com) · Peter Norvig

Do: the first essay; leave the sequel for later.

A whole interpreter in about a page. After it, "read, then evaluate in an environment" is something you've written, not read about.

Implement DNS in a Weekend (implement-dns.wizardzines.com) · Julia Evans

Its own title promises a weekend. You send a query you built by hand and follow referrals down from a root server.

Build your own React (pomb.us) · Rodrigo Pombo

One page, eight steps, and you've rebuilt the core ideas of the framework most front-end code is written in.

Ray Tracing in One Weekend (raytracing.github.io) · Peter Shirley, Trevor David Black, Steve Hollasch

The second book whose title names a weekend. It ends with an image, so you know when you're done.

Write yourself a Git (wyag.thb.lt) · Thibault Polge

Do: init, hash-object, cat-file, log and checkout are enough for a weekend; the rest is a second one.

Git's object model, checked against real git. Merges and history stop being mysterious.

Build Your Own Text Editor (viewsourcecode.org) · Paige Ruten

Do: through incremental search; syntax highlighting is a bonus.

About 1,000 lines of C with no libraries. You learn what a terminal really is.

Let's Build a Simple Database (a SQLite clone in C) (cstack.github.io) · Connor Stack

Do: through the B-tree leaf splits; internal-node splitting can wait.

The largest build, so it comes last: a pager and an on-disk B-tree.