off topic question: When do you find time do such interesting things as these? I'd really like to dive deeper in this topic. As a CS student, who also got to work as a dev at the same time for a living, I'm even happy to get to sleep 8 hours.
Almost always in evenings, whenever I have time and feel like it. If you're a student, you're probably hosed with deadlines, so pick very small things to try out — things like really simple interpreters.
This particular project luckily turned out to be quick to get working. Also, I kept the scope very small, calling it a day right before getting big ideas.
