Life & fun · alternatives · 2026
24 alternatives to Gene – a Lisp-like language built around a generic "Gene" data type
Hi HN — I’ve been working on Gene, a general-purpose, homoiconic language with a Lisp-like surface syntax, but with a core data model that’s intentionally not just “lists all the way down”. What’s unique: the Gene data type Gene’s central idea is a single unified structure that always carries (1) a type, (2) key/value properties, and (3) positional children: (type ^prop1 value1 ^prop2 value2 child1 child2 ...) The key point is that the type, each property name, each property value, and each child can themselves be any Gene data. Everything composes uniformly. In practice this is…
Gene is a general-purpose, homoiconic programming language with Lisp-like syntax built around a unified data structure. Each Gene combines a type, key-value properties, and positional children, all of which can… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes.
- 1
Write your own compiler: introduction. Code genetation. AST. Abstract syntax tree. lisp. javascript.
2017 · blog.klipse.tech · its alternatives →
- 2
A lisp dialect based on pattern matching and term rewriting - abuseofnotation/termlisp
2024 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 3
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 →
- 4IW
The book page links to a blog post that explains how I got about it (and has a link to sample content), but the TL&DR is that I could not find a lot of books that were on "our" history _and_ were larded with technical details. So I set about writing one, and some five years later I'm happy to share the result. I think it's one of the few "computer history" books that has tons of code, but correct me if I'm wrong (I wrote this both to tell a story and to learn :-)). My favorite languages are Smalltalk and Lisp, but as an Emacs user, I've been using the latter for much longer and for my…
Feb 2026 · berksoft.ca · its alternatives →
- 5
Recently created a minimal persistent relational database in Go. Main focus was on implementing & understanding working the of database, storage management & transaction handling. Use of B+ Tree for storage engine(support for indexing), managing a Free List (for reusing nodes), Support for transactions, Concurrent Reads. Still have many things to add & fix like query processing being one of the main & fixing some bugs Repo link - https://github.com/Sahilb315/AtomixDB Would love to hear your thoughts
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 6FS
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 →
- 7
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 →
- 8
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 →
- 9
I made a web game inspired by Geoguessr and Wordle, where you get shown a 3D model of a random human protein each day, and you have to triangulate its gene name using similarity clues. My background is in wet lab molecular biology and I intend this game to be engaging mostly to other biologists. But if you're outside the field, I'm interested to know if you can still solve it with browser use LLMs, and if you learned something interesting doing so. Let me know what you think. I made it with Claude over the last 2 months. My coding experience is limited to basic python data analysis and…
Dec 2025 · geneguessr.brinedew.bio · its alternatives →
- 10
A lisp rosetta stone to demonstrate modern language features - eatonphil/lisp-rosetta-stone
2021 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 11
A Lisp-style language whose programs consist entirely of parentheses. - cammckinnon/Parenthetic
2012 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 12CD
2012 · scattered-thoughts.net · its alternatives →
- 13
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 →
- 14
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 →
- 15
Lisp-like-R: A clojure inspired lisp that compiles to R in R - dirkschumacher/llr
2021 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 16
Hi HN, author here. Happy to answer any questions. I had an itch to make a lisp like language that was a thin layer on top JavaScript. Something that could leverage the thriving ecosystem that exists around JavaScript. It's brittle, hot off the oven. Besides being a fan of parenthesis, I think macros fill in a gap that the JavaScript ecosystem today fills in with one-off compilers, bundler plugins and such. Macros can't do everything, but for example I think they have the potential to enable things like JSX, Solid and Svelte style libraries. Take the tour to get a feel for what it can do and…
2023 · daklang.com · its alternatives →
- 17
Lisp 2 Go. Contribute to codr7/g-fu development by creating an account on GitHub.
2019 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 18
Contribute to sacert/Genetic-Hello-World development by creating an account on GitHub.
2017 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 19MW
2012 · texodus.github.com · its alternatives →
- 20
Next-level syntax for C-like languages :). Contribute to kiselgra/c-mera development by creating an account on GitHub.
2018 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 21
This is a hobby project of mine that I started a few years ago to learn about programming language implementation. It was created 95% without AI, although a few recent commits include code from Gemini CLI. I started out following Crafting Interpreters, but gradually branched off that until I had almost nothing left in common. Tech stack: Rust, Cranelift (JIT compilation), LALRPOP (parser). Original title: "A small programming language where everything is a value" (edited based on comments)
Jan 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 22
Genotype Programming Language Homepage
Sep 2026 · genotype-lang.org · its alternatives →
- 23
2010 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 24
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