Work · alternatives · 2026
24 alternatives to Ink: An LLVM based programming language [WIP]
Hi there. I'm working on a programming language -- called Ink - in my spare time, with a friend. It uses LLVM for the backend, the parser and lexer are both hand written in C. The project is just for a bit of fun, we aren't trying to "revolutionize the programming language", but we're okay with being a bit quirky and out of the box with some of the syntax/features in the language. At the moment, the language is in it's early stages, and there's still a lot to do, which means that if you want to learn more about compilers, now would be a good time to start working on the language, since…
Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. Ink: An LLVM based programming language [WIP] launched in 2015; newer entries below may have overtaken it.
- 1
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 →
- 2
🔬 a C++ compiler middle-end, using an LLVM backend - artagnon/rhine
2016 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 3
"interesting" VM in C. Let's see how this goes. Contribute to tekknolagi/carp development by creating an account on GitHub.
2014 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 4
See what it’s like to program in a language without null.
2015 · books.thoughtbot.com · its alternatives →
- 5
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 →
- 6SI
Hey HN, this is a small Haskell learning project that I wanted to share. It's just a website where you can see how many people write the exact same text as you (thought it was a fun idea). It's built using Scotty, SQLite, Redis and Caddy. Currently it's running in a small DigitalOcean droplet (1 Gb RAM). Using Haskell for web development (specifically with Scotty) was slightly easier than I thought, but still a relatively hard task compared to other languages. One of my main friction points was Haskell's multiple string-like types: String, Text (& lazy), ByteString (& lazy), and each library…
Jan 2026 · subth.ink · its alternatives →
- 7
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 →
- 8
A Pascal to LLVM compiler in Haskell . Contribute to sam46/Paskell development by creating an account on GitHub.
2020 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 9
A minimal viable programming language on top of liblgpp - codr7/alang
2021 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 10LP
Hi! I am doing a learning project, attempting to build an imperative language (and interpreter). The end product will be useless for others, I just want to learn and better understand how to build imperative languages. :) If someone else shares this interest and want to give some good hints on good resources I would be grateful. Currently I am looking at an awesome text by Bob Nystrom. All suggestions and tips on resources are most welcome. I am very much a beginner in this, but I find this topic very fascinating. Mail me or post links here! Cheers! You can try a beta version Online at…
2020 · its alternatives →
- 11
My implementation of Thorsten Bell's book (Writing an Interpreter in Go) - actuallyachraf/monkey-giggle
2020 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 12
This repo is the result of a debate about what kind of programming language might be appropriate if humans are no longer the primary authors. Initially the thought was "LLMs can just generate binaries directly" (this was before a more famous person had the same idea). But that on reflection seems like a bad approach because languages exist to capture program semantics that are elided by translation to machine code. The next step was to wonder if an existing "machine readable" program representation can be the target for LLM code generation. It turns out yes. This project is the result of…
Mar 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 13MW
2012 · texodus.github.com · its alternatives →
- 14
This is my side project for the past few months. I started it because I just learned about functional programming and at the same time want to write something cool in C. Web playground: https://leonw774.github.io/lreng
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 15
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 →
- 16CO
First tutorial to date. Writing your first C program, includes a link at the bottom with a detailed look at printf() as optional reading. I would love some feedback, as I intend writing up a lot of dev articles for people to learn from : www.xanthu.com/first-c-program
2013 · its alternatives →
- 17
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 →
- 18
A compiled systems programming language written in Go using the LLVM framework - ark-lang/ark
2016 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 19
Hi all, I threw together a small prototype I am calling “Notepad.ai”. A new take on UIs for interacting with LLMs. While I enjoy using LLM’s in the chat format I wanted to see what it would be like to do it in a more long form style. It let’s you write in a pretty free form, much like Window’s Notepad, but you can choose to hit ctrl+[ to analyze the text with a preset prompt of your choosing. It has a few other small features. It’s WIP and very experimental. I would appreciate any feedback or thoughts. Video: https://youtu.be/ntdlgFmSxQY Live Demo:…
2024 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 20
Hello, HN! Today I want to show my project: a programming language named Ü. For many years I has been using C++ for coding - both at my job and for hobby projects. C++ is mostly fine for me, since it delivers great performance and powerful abstractions. But C++ had and has many footguns, which make using it sometimes painful. So I thought a better programming language could exist, which can have many advantages of C++ without its downsides. Especially I wanted safety by-default, so that shooting the leg is hard, but without unnecessary overengineering. After a brief search I found no other…
2025 · sh20raj.github.io · its alternatives →
- 21
Hey HN! Last week I was working on a website and needed a way to synchronise visuals with live music. I've used MIDI controllers for this before, but I am travelling right now and don't have mine with me. So I had the crazy idea to build a browser extension that uses the keyboard as input and includes a sequencer. I gave myself 24 to work on it. It ended up taking longer (of course), specially since I ended up creating a demo, a small landing, docs, and an intro video. Took me one week from idea to launch (pushed quite a bit tbh). Features: - Works as a browser extension. Atm distributed…
2024 · minitap.io · its alternatives →
- 22
As we have all seen LLMs are pretty damn good at turning natural language to code, so why are we not writing programs in English? This an experiment in compiling english "programs" to python. It is half a meme and half serious.
2024 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 23
Hey HN! We just launched PromptL: a templating language built to simplify writing complex prompts for LLMs like GPT-4 and Claude. Why PromptL? Creating dynamic prompts for LLMs can get tricky, even with standardized APIs that use lists of messages and settings. While these formats are consistent, building complex interactions with custom logic or branching paths can quickly become repetitive and hard to manage as prompts grow. PromptL steps in to make this simple. It allows you to define and manage LLM conversations in a readable, single-file format, with support for control flow and…
2024 · promptl.ai · its alternatives →
- 24
Hi HN, While building RAG agents, I noticed a lot of token budget was wasted on formatting overhead (HTML tags, JSON structure, whitespace). Existing solutions felt too heavy (often requiring torch/transformers), so I wrote this lightweight, zero-dependency library to solve it. It includes strategies for context packing, PII redaction, and tool output compression. Benchmarks show it can save ~15% of tokens with negligible latency overhead (<0.5ms). Happy to answer any questions!
Dec 2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
Also compare
- A new programming language inspired by Go, no LLVM alternatives
- Rhine – A typed Elixir-inspired language on LLVM alternatives
- A small virtual machine written in C alternatives
- Maybe Haskell alternatives
- Cassette, a Personal Programming Language alternatives
- Subth.ink – write something and see how many others wrote the same alternatives
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 →