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Retrocomputing

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    I vaguely recall starting to write one in Algol 60 on KDF9 under Eldon2, but the system got decommissioned before I got very far. This probably doesn't count. @Ralfzahn: 'why'? because that is why we have high-level languages. Commented Sep 6, 2020 at 17:55
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    Just a comment because I have nothing definitive to report, but BASICally, on the earlier machines, there were no great HLL for implementing another language like BASIC. On later machines, BASIC tended to be one of the first to be implemented - and therefore in assembler. It may seem strange now with so many HLLs implemented in C (or C++ or whatever), but in the good 'ol days, every language either compiled assembler (and then assembled) or compiled straight to machine code. Commented Sep 6, 2020 at 18:33
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    Unclear to how the choice of implementation language for a compiler relates to the object language produced by that compiler. "Implemented in HLL, output in machine code" seems commonplace. Commented Sep 6, 2020 at 19:17
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    Wikipedia suggests that 7th edition Dartmouth BASIC (1978) was written in itself, though that's a compiler not an interpreter. Commented Sep 7, 2020 at 4:34
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    Isn't it more "who do we have who can lead a team for creating the interpreter" and "what tools do we have available for doing it". If all they have is assembler and a Fortran compiler, then it will probably be written in Fortran. Commented Sep 7, 2020 at 7:36