DigiNews

Summary

Allison Kaptur walks through Byterun, a Python interpreter written in Python, using it as a learning tool to illuminate how Python code is lexed, parsed, compiled, and executed as bytecode on a stack-based virtual machine. The article starts with a tiny toy interpreter and gradually extends it to support variables, frames, and a fuller VirtualMachine, while also connecting to real Python bytecode via the dis module and discussing dynamic typing. It concludes with reflections on Byterun's relationship to CPython and points readers to the GitHub repository for deeper exploration.