Correct. With an ideal standard document that describes the language, someone could build a compiler for the language from scratch and it should behave correct

Correct. With an ideal standard document that describes the language, someone could build a compiler for the language from scratch and it should behave correctly. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programming_language_specification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programming_language_specifica... Some example standards: C: https://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg14/ https://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg14/ ECMAScript (Javascript): https://tc39.es/ecma262/ https://tc39.es/ecma262/ C++: https://isocpp.org/std/the-standard https://isocpp.org/std/the-standard Scheme: https://schemers.org/Documents/Standards/ https://schemers.org/Documents/Standards/ Ada: http://www.ada-auth.org/standards/ada12_w_tc1.html http://www.ada-auth.org/standards/ada12_w_tc1.html For Rust, Ferrous Systems is working on the Ferrocene Language Specification to formally document the Rust subset that Ferrocene will use. https://ferrous-systems.com/blog/ferrocene-language-specification/ https://ferrous-systems.com/blog/ferrocene-language-specific... https://ferrous-systems.com/ferrocene/ https://ferrous-systems.com/ferrocene/