Dev tools · alternatives · 2026
24 alternatives to A systems language with runtime reflection and no GC
Hi HN, I’ve been working on an experimental programming language called XXML. The project started from a frustration I kept running into across systems languages: Languages with strong ownership tend to avoid runtime reflection. Languages with rich reflection usually rely on GC or give up memory guarantees. Compile-time code generation often requires a separate macro language. I wanted to explore whether those tradeoffs are truly necessary. What XXML is trying to do XXML is a statically-typed, native language that: Uses explicit ownership and borrowing (no garbage collector) Supports runtime…
Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes.
- 1
A functional programming language with static memory management - vekatze/neut
2020 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 2LW
2021 · justine.lol · its alternatives →
- 3
I've been working on implementing the compile-time approach to memory management described in this thesis (https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/techreports/UCAM-CL-TR-908.pdf) for some time now - some of the performance results look promising! (Although some less so...) I think it would be great to see this taken further and built into a more complete functional language.
2020 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 4
I made this simple language over the past year, and it's time for me to say it's "done" (for now) and focus on other projects. I've struggled to answer the question "what is this language for?" other than "it's just for me" — and that's probably good enough. But I also wanted to make something "complete" that others could use if they wanted to. Writing my own language was an incredibly rewarding experience, and I'd recommend everyone trying it. Let me know if you have any questions or feedback, and please share your own experience if you've also made a language.
2023 · cassette-lang.com · its alternatives →
- 5
An implementation of a dynamic programming language in Rust. Includes: Parser/Compiler, REPL, Virtual Machine, Bytecode Disassembler This started out as a learning project to teach myself Rust. It has grown into a decently substantial piece of software and I've learned quite a bit in the process! Some neat things: + A garbage collector that can store dynamically sized types without any double-indirection (i.e. I have my own Box implementation with manual alloc/dealloc) + The smart pointer used to reference GCed data is a thin pointer. The ptr metadata needed for DSTs is stored in…
2022 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 6
A complete compiler for a simple language (in less than 150 LoC) - 00_readme.md
2022 · gist.github.com · its alternatives →
- 7
Moved to Forgejo! Contribute to krig/LISP development by creating an account on GitHub.
2018 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 8
Long-simmering side project that is finally ready to see the light. HAMTs are a cool persistent data structure and implementing one has been a lot of fun. Beyond the code, there is likely some value in the extensive and largely complete implementation docs; basic benchmarks are linked in the README, too. Kind of aiming to be "the libavl for HAMTs". That is obviously a high and aspirational bar but a distinct possibility if it stirs up a little interest and/or contribution. Anyways, it's time for this to go out, collect feedback and maybe even some use outside of toy projects. Let me…
2023 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 9FS
Hi HN! I've been working on the fuse programming language, it's a statically typed purely functional language with higher-kinder types and ad-hoc polymorphism. It compiles to the GRIN whole-program optimizer, producing LLVM-generated native code. Fuse supports ADTs, Generics, Type Methods, Traits, Pattern matching etc. all in a functional style with no mutations. I’ve been developing the language for 5 years, with code written in Scala. I’ve started coding the language from the base of System F that was implemented as part of the book: Types and Programming Languages (tapl). And then…
Aug 2026 · fuselang.org · its alternatives →
- 10
Meta programming utilities for C++14. Merged in matt-42/lithium - matt-42/iod
2014 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 11
I spent the past 2 weeks making this toy programming language. I basically forked the Go scanner/parser, and changed the syntax to have functions return a single value. This enable proper Result/Option type to be used as well as propagating errors with an operator. I also wanted to have short "type inferred" anonymous functions to be able to use functions like Map/Reduce/Filter, without having to use 100 characters to specify the types.
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 12
This is an introduction to the "Nature" project: https://nature-lang.org/docs/getting-started/meet-nature I am the author of the Nature language, and today I have released the 0.4.0-beta version. For detailed updates, please see https://nature-lang.org/docs/prologue/release-notes Now, Nature can easily interact with C language. It is anticipated that in about six months, Nature will release a version available to the community. By then, there will be stable syntax API, a complete standard library, and support for development tools. Moreover,…
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 13
See what it’s like to program in a language without null.
2015 · books.thoughtbot.com · its alternatives →
- 14
I'm writing a compiler for a systems language focused on concurrency and parallelism. It’s a re-engineering of a prior work, with an explicit emphasis on memory management and type safety, plus first-class parallel primitives at the language level. The language is now capable of compiling a substantial portion of its own source code to tokens using a single-pass C back-end. The self-hosted compiler includes a handwritten lexer and a parser, with an arena-based allocator to support fast compilation and eliminate GC complexity. The primary goals for the project are: First-class parallel and…
Nov 2025 · axelang.org · its alternatives →
- 15
Full gscript scripting language implementation using the GVM as a runtime environment. A language with objects, functions, strings, numbers and booleans. Easy to hack, understand, embed or modify. - gs-lang/README.md at master · geertvos/gs-lang
2020 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 16
Glupe 🙏🌹. Constrain where AI can generate code. Keep the rest of your codebase untouched. - alonsovm44/glupe
Mar 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 17CA
2017 · billsix.github.io · its alternatives →
- 18
Hey HN, I wanted to share the new online playground for Salt (https://salt-lang.dev/playground/), a sovereign systems language designed for high-performance, distributed workloads where paying an "abstraction tax" is no longer acceptable. We started building Salt to bridge the gap between the raw power of manual pointer arithmetic and the safety guarantees of modern high-level languages. The architecture relies on an MLIR-based backbone and a Z3-powered "formal shadow," and the design is rooted in three main pillars: Fast Enough: The target is to stay within 20% of C's…
Jul 2026 · salt-lang.dev · its alternatives →
- 19
Greetings HN, I have been working on a new programming language for the last 3 years and thought it was time to share it with some people. The core of the language is done and i have been using it to create all software related to the language: the compiler itself, the website and vman (valk manager, like npm). There's still alot of work todo but was hoping for some feedback. Maybe an interesting feature of the language is (so i think) that it's the first language with a stateful garbage collector. It basically knows what memory goes out of scope and which doesn't without having to scan for…
Feb 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 20
:aquarius: A Lisp-esque, JS-interpreted scripting language - tsortwehttam/runiq
2015 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 21
My implementation of Thorsten Bell's book (Writing an Interpreter in Go) - actuallyachraf/monkey-giggle
2020 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 22
What's your tool chain for data and document processing? - jq is great, but limited to JSON; and jQuery limited to HTML; templating systems get messy for non-trivial logic; TypeScript lacks pattern matching and schema support. So I built Lambda — an expressive functional language that combines the power of Lisp, TypeScript, and many DSLs like jq, jQuery, RelaxNG, etc. It has a lightweight 9 MB runtime, built from scratch in C/C++, that provides an end-to-end document processing pipeline (parse → validate/query/transform → layout → render/view). Internally, Lambda parse…
Mar 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 23
Hi HN, I'm the creator of Mach (https://github.com/octalide/mach or https://machlang.org). Two days ago, we finally achieved full self hosting. I wanted to make a post here to show off the language since this is a big milestone for us. ## TL;DR about the language for those curious: - There are no external dependencies anywhere in the pipeline. This includes LLVM, libc bindings, or anything of the sort (save for the historical bootstrap compiler, which requires any C compiler and has been phased out completely). - Mach is extremely opinionated and very…
Jun 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 24WL
Hey y’all, we’re really excited to share that we’re launching a new free, open source tool called Scale. It’s a highly-performant WebAssembly function runtime that enables composable, language-agnostic software development. TL;DR - Scale allows you to write functions in any language, then use them in any other language. It’s pretty exciting. We currently support Go and Rust, but TypeScript is coming soon and support for a handful of other languages is already in the works. We’d love to hear any feedback you have, so let us know what you think!
2023 · scale.sh · its alternatives →
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