fspl/README.md

FSPL

Freestanding programming language: a high-ish-level language that has absolutely no need for any runtime support, designed to work well in scenarios where dragging along a language runtime is either not possible or simply not wanted.

This language is designed for:

• Operating system development
• Embedded software
• People who think modern languages are bloated and dislike them on principle

This is really another go at the ARF programming language. FSPL is a working title because the ARF acronym did not make any sense but I can't think of a better name. I am now working on this as a senior project so I am obligated to not abandon it and start over again.

Design Principles

• Abstractions must happen at compile time unless absolutely necessary
• Compiler must not generate any functions that the user does not write
• Compiler must avoid generating logic that the user does not write

Roadmap

Late 2023

• Top-level entities
  • Type definitions
    • Methods
  • Defined and external functions
• Type system
  • Strict, static, bottom-up type inference
  • Pointers
  • Arrays
  • Slices
  • Structs
  • Interfaces
• Expressions and control structures
  • Literals adapt to types via bottom-up type inference
  • Assignment
  • Variable declaration
  • Variable access
  • Function calls
  • Method calls
  • Interface behavior calls
  • Operations
  • Casting
  • Blocks
  • If/else
  • Loops

Early 2024

• Union types (carry type information)
• Match statements
• Modules
• Vararg
• Lightweight, modularized (and of course, totally optional) standard library
• Conditional compilation
• Constants
• For loops
• Range loops

Afterwards

• Generics?
• Ownership system?
• And more!