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Work · alternatives · 2026

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24 alternatives to Silk, a simple systems programming language

Hi HN! Silk is a project I began working on approximately six months ago without any prior experience or knowledge of compiler design, and it's been a frustrating but fun learning experience. It is very much a work in progress, but I would love to hear feedback of any kind!

Silk is a systems programming language created by a developer learning compiler design from scratch. The project aims to simplify systems programming through a straightforward syntax and design. Still in active… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. Silk, a simple systems programming language launched in 2020; newer entries below may have overtaken it.

  1. 1

    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 →

  2. 2

    a lightweight web framework in c. Contribute to ashtonjamesd/lavandula development by creating an account on GitHub.

    2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

  3. 3

    A few weeks ago I saw a post about someone converting an entire C++ codebase to Rust using AI in under two weeks. That inspired me — if AI can rewrite a whole language stack that fast, I wanted to try building a programming language from scratch with AI assistance. I've also been noticing growing global interest in Korean language and culture, and I wondered: what would a programming language look like if every keyword was in Hangul (the Korean writing system)? Han is the result. It's a statically-typed language written in Rust with a full compiler pipeline (lexer → parser → AST →…

    Mar 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

  4. 4

    Hi HN! Korean high school senior here, about to start CS in college. I built a browser engine from scratch in C++ to understand how browsers work. First time using C++, 8 weeks of development, lots of debugging—but it works! Features: - HTML parsing with error correction - CSS cascade and inheritance - Block/inline layout engine - Async image loading + caching - Link navigation + history Hardest parts: - String parsing(html, css) - Rendering - Image Caching & Layout Reflowing What I learned (beyond code): - Systematic debugging is crucial - Ship with known bugs rather than chase…

    Jan 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

  5. 5AE

    easyprog.online ist Ihre erste und beste Informationsquelle über easyprog. Hier finden Sie auch weitere interessante Links. Wir hoffen, dass Sie bei Ihrer Suche erfolgreich sind!

    2019 · easyprog.online · its alternatives →

  6. 6

    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 →

  7. 7

    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 →

  8. 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. 9GI

    Hi all! I'm going into my freshman year, and figured that the best way to prepare for the intro to programming Racket course would be to implement my own garbage-collected, dynamically typed, functional programming language in C ;) Anyways... here's the repo: https://github.com/liam-ilan/crumb I started learning C over the summer, so I still have a whole lot to learn... Any feedback would be greatly appreciated! :D

    2023 · its alternatives →

  10. 10IW

    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 →

  11. 11MW
  12. 12

    A simple programming and debugging environment.

    2022 · hackage.haskell.org · its alternatives →

  13. 13

    I've been spending some time coding fp. It is a programming language heavily inspired by the language John Backus described in his 1977 Turing Award lecture. There's plenty of examples in the projects github repository for the interested!

    2022 · github.com · its alternatives →

  14. 14

    The Antimony programming language. Contribute to antimony-lang/antimony development by creating an account on GitHub.

    2021 · github.com · its alternatives →

  15. 15CC
  16. 16

    Aria is a modern, dynamic scripting language. It is meant to be a "sweet spot" language, easy to pick-up and enjoyable to use. It comes with a familiar C-style syntax, and draws inspiration from a variety of languages. It has a small but usable standard library and strives to be a low-ceremony-get-stuff-done kind of language. It is currently at version 0.9 and I would love feedback as I work towards getting it to 1.0.

    2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

  17. 17

    Explore research at Microsoft, a site featuring the impact of research along with publications, products, downloads, and research careers.

    2013 · research.microsoft.com · its alternatives →

  18. 18NM
  19. 19

    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 →

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  21. 21

    I'm fascinated by the generative AI wave rolling over us, and wondered if AI could create a language that it might prefer using over the ones created by and for humans. To create the design, I had AI analyze the ASTs of several mainstream languages plus a few of the conceptually groundbreaking but esoteric ones (listed in the README) and then create a new structure and new syntax. It was named after the Jacquard machine (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacquard_machine), a precursor to Babbage's Analytical Engine (and punch cards). The result reused a lot of existing ideas…

    Jul 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

  22. 22

    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 →

  23. 23

    🔬 a C++ compiler middle-end, using an LLVM backend - artagnon/rhine

    2016 · github.com · its alternatives →

  24. 24
    Finyuus▲81

    A code-first language for durable, governed AI workflows

    Aug 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

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