[alexobenauer]

One way to get at this: making your own language will show you not only what each thing means, but also what the underlying mechanics are!

Crafting Interpreters is a great guide on this: http://www.craftinginterpreters.com

[capableweb]

> One way to get at this: making your own language will show you not only what each thing means, but also what the underlying mechanics are!

True, but if everyone who asked any question about something had to implement those things to even understand the basics of them, we'd never get anything done :)

[eatonphil]

For what it's worth, most CS degrees do involve building a programming language.

You don't need a degree to be a developer (I don't have one) but I think it's a good indication that it is actually reasonable to think that every developer could implement a programming language. (And I mean developer as in someone who writes code professionally as their main job, not necessarily sysadmins or designers or whatnot).

To reiterate, I think many more people than think they can can develop their own language.