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Dev tools · alternatives · 2026

24 alternatives to I made an esoteric programming language that's read like a spellbook

i made an esoteric programming language which i call spellscript. every program is a "spell" written in a "grimoire," and you have to use keywords like summon, enchant, inscribe, and conjure. it's literally read like a spellbook because the syntax consists of all natural language, and newlines are optional. your code can now be an essay, like everybody wants! for example, if you want to print something, you'd write: `begin the grimoire. inscribe whispers of "hello, world!". close the grimoire.` it has variables, dynamic typing, arrays, functions, conditionals, loops, string manipulation,…

SpellScript is an esoteric programming language where code reads like a spellbook. Programs are written as "spells" within "grimoires" using natural language keywords like summon, enchant, inscribe, and conjure.… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes.

  1. 1

    Design details that feel like magic

    2024 · designspells.com · its alternatives →

  2. 2L

    2014 · luciotato.github.io · its alternatives →

  3. 3

    I've built many interpreters over the years, and Bolt represents my attempt at building the scripting language I always wanted. This is the first public release, 0.1.0! I've felt like most embedded languages have been moving towards safety and typing over years, with things like Python type hints, the explosive popularity of typescript, and even typing in Luau, which powers one of the largest scripted evironments in the world. Bolt attempts to harness this directly in the lagnauge rather than as a preprocessing step, and reap benefits in terms of both safety and performance. I intend to be…

    2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

  4. 4IW

    https://www.manning.com/books/data-oriented-programming-in-j... This book is a distillation of everything I’ve learned about what effective development looks like in Java (so far!). It's about how to organize programs around data "as plain data" and the surprisingly benefits that emerge when we do. Programs that are built around the data they manage tend to be simpler, smaller, and significantly easier understand. Java has changed radically over the last several years. It has picked up all kinds of new language features which support data oriented programming (records,…

    2024 · its alternatives →

  5. 5

    Hi friends, I started casually working on scrapscript in 2015. I built a few compilers over the years to test out various ideas/implementations, and I think I'm finally happy with the overall design. The code is not public yet. Email me at [email protected] if you're interested in joining the core team later this year. Let me know if you have any questions or feedback :)

    2023 · scrapscript.org · its alternatives →

  6. 6WC
  7. 7IC

    AntiLang is an interpreted programming language written in Go. The basic idea of this is to keep all the logical parts of a language same, but reverse the structure of it. The idea for this project came when I was having a long midnight conversation with my friend and thought of writing such a weird language. The initial draft was far worse than the current implementation; we thought of reversing the brackets and the language would be read from bottom to top. I'm happy that I dropped that idea Technical details: As the interpreter is written in Golang, I compiled it to WASM, and the whole…

    2025 · siruscodes.github.io · its alternatives →

  8. 8

    I've been working on this small, slightly weird expression-oriented programming language for a little while now and feel ready to share it with others. I use it pretty often now in my day-to-day and work life, as a scratchpad for doing a bit of quick math or picking some pieces of data out of a JSON payload. Would really appreciate any feedback about the syntax, docs, features that are glaringly missing, etc. Before anybody mentions it: I know the performance is pretty lousy when dealing with a lot of data. If you can believe it, the runtime is about 100x faster than it used to be! Long term…

    2025 · blots-lang.org · its alternatives →

  9. 9

    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 →

  10. 10

    Esolang inspired by ASCII art. Contribute to aaronjanse/asciidots development by creating an account on GitHub.

    2017 · github.com · its alternatives →

  11. 11

    The Playground lets you write TypeScript or JavaScript online in a safe and sharable way.

    Mar 2026 · typescriptlang.org · its alternatives →

  12. 12

    I have been working on this for a while. Main goal was to build a usable programming language. I even end up building few tools for this such as IntelliJ plugin, etc. I also plan on building some games with it in future. Main use case would be: small games (raylib), tools (static linux binaries with musl-libc) and recreational programming (wasm4). Works in Windows also. If you have emscripten in path you can even build these games/tools (raylib) to WASM. Please have a look. Thank you. ------------------------------------- Main Repo:…

    2023 · yakshalang.github.io · its alternatives →

  13. 13

    Vercel's tiny, open-source coding agent

    Aug 2026 · fx.sh · its alternatives →

  14. 14

    Transform boring lines of code into natural English

    2021 · its alternatives →

  15. 15

    See what it’s like to program in a language without null.

    2015 · books.thoughtbot.com · its alternatives →

  16. 16

    goboscript is a text-based programming language which compiles to Scratch. It allows you to write Scratch projects in text, and compile it into a .sb3 file - which can be opened in the Scratch editor, TurboWarp or be uploaded to the Scratch website. goboscript allows you to create advanced Scratch projects with ease, you can use any text editor, use a version control system such as git. You can refactor your code using search and replace. Text code can be copy pasted, which allows you to easily reuse code or share it with others. goboscript syntax is concise and easy to read. goboscript…

    2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

  17. 17TM

    I recently published a book called “The Magic of Code” which is about the delights of the computational world, examining computing as a kind of “humanistic liberal art” that connects to so many topics, from art and biology to philosophy and language. The link I’ve shared is to a page on my book’s website where you can download a pdf of the introduction, to give HN readers a taste of what is inside. Right now there is so much worry and concern around technology that I feel like some people—though not the folks here—have forgotten how much fun that code and computation can also be. So I wanted…

    2025 · themagicofcode.com · its alternatives →

  18. 18ID
  19. 19CC
  20. 20

    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 →

  21. 21

    Entish is a declarative Datalog-like language for formal RPG rules - etherealmachine/entish

    2021 · github.com · its alternatives →

  22. 22BA
  23. 23

    I'm working on a scripting-language heavily inspired by Javascript and GLSL. The idea is to use this for a game engine I'm working on.

    2022 · github.com · its alternatives →

  24. 24

    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 →

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Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →