Making compilers are not that hard. Sure, it grows in complexity as you make it more feature-complete. But writing compilers is actually a lot of fun. If you're interested in compilers you should definitely try making a simple one. This book is free and a great starting point: https://craftinginterpreters.com/. I'm not associates with the book author in any way, I just found incredible value in it.

The hard thing is staying with the project. Lots of interesting C-like projects have died over time, such as https://www.kitlang.org