Lunar: a student's programming language that runs a Minecraft clone
A 19-year-old engineering student designed their own language, Lunar, and later used Claude Code to implement features such as maps, modules and a standard library, then a Minecraft clone to stress-test it.
Credits
- Reddit poster AdventurousMoney4512 Source ↗
- Repository account ahmadodeh9000 Source ↗
Earliest dated source:
The full story
Lunar is a small dynamically typed scripting language with its own bytecode compiler, stack-based virtual machine and garbage collector, written in C by a 19-year-old computer engineering student. It started from the book Crafting Interpreters, which the student followed for the core before adding arrays, a way to call C libraries and SDL2 graphics on their own.
Later the student wrote a roadmap, designed each feature and used Claude Code to help implement them, reviewing every change and requiring tests. That added maps, error handling, modules and a standard library for strings, files and commands. To stress-test it, Claude Code wrote LunarCraft, a Minecraft-style voxel game of over 1,000 lines of Lunar that runs at 60 FPS.
The student calls it a learning and hobby project with rough edges; numbers currently print with only six digits.
How it was done
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Sources
From a short post by the maker, so the details are as they tell them.
- Reddit: My side project for the past year: my own programming language. Today it runs a Minecraft clone.Reddit poster: AdventurousMoney4512Posted
The student's post in r/SideProject on why and how Lunar was built.
- The code: github.comRepository account: ahmadodeh9000
The language's repository, including the Minecraft-style example.