For anyone who comes across this thread and is genuinely interested in educating themselves about how programming languages can be constructed in a principled w

For anyone who comes across this thread and is genuinely interested in educating themselves about how programming languages can be constructed in a principled way (what I would call sane) you can consult Pierce's Types and Programming Languages. With some work anyone can learn the material. It's not as simple as reading a blog post unfortunately, but you'll have a much deeper understanding of what it means to build a programming language.