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I am currently designing and writing a custom coding language in Python 2.7 and as I am implementing more and more functions, I keep realising that I have more functions to implement.

I am currently wondering two things.

The first is what is the smallest amount of functions to implement in a coding language for it to work and be expandable like other coding languages by having user created modules and functions. (Personally I would limit this, for Python functions, to if, else, import, def)

The second thing is what other functions should be implemented to make it easier for the user but aren't necessarily required.

Antobat
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The smallest number of functions needed to allowed programmers to expand a language is one. They need a way to connect to compiled object files *.o and shared libraries *.so. For example, if they can connect and import functions from libc, then all of the system functions will be available to them.

One functionality that makes things easier, especially for teams, is namespaces. If each module is a separate namespace, then there is no need to coordinate names among team members.

shawnhcorey
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