# How is Julia written in Julia?

**URL:** <https://discourse.julialang.org/t/how-is-julia-written-in-julia/50918>\
**Category:** Internals & Design\
**Tags:** question\
**Created:** [November 28, 2020, 9:31pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/how-is-julia-written-in-julia/50918 "2020-11-28T21:31:51Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 3

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**Author:** ![stevengj](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/stevengj/32/71_2.png) [@stevengj](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/stevengj)\
**Post date:** [November 28, 2020, 10:11pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/how-is-julia-written-in-julia/50918/3 "2020-11-28T22:11:17Z")

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Note that it is _possible_ for a language to be implemented entirely in itself: this called [self-hosting (Wikipedia)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-hosting_(compilers)).

However, Julia is not self-hosting and there is not much interest in working on this. See e.g. [this discussion](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julia-written-in-julia/25781), [this discussion](https://groups.google.com/g/julia-dev/c/dOAwcwm5iEA/m/dJFqob5HfNYJ?pli=1), and [this article](https://tratt.net/laurie/blog/entries/the_bootstrapped_compiler_and_the_damage_done.html) on why an emphasis on self-hosting can be detrimental to language design.

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