Ask HN: Possible? Faster than C, simpler than Python, safer than Rust

This page summarizes the projects mentioned and recommended in the original post on news.ycombinator.com

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  • Nim

    Nim is a statically typed compiled systems programming language. It combines successful concepts from mature languages like Python, Ada and Modula. Its design focuses on efficiency, expressiveness, and elegance (in that order of priority).

  • https://nim-lang.org/

  • zig

    General-purpose programming language and toolchain for maintaining robust, optimal, and reusable software.

  • "Faster than C", I saw people write C code slower than a Python equivalent. So I have to admit, I don't know what it means for a language to be fast, because it depends on the algorithm being implemented.

    ---

    "simpler than Python", what does "simple" mean?

    Simple design? Python's design is very complex (take a look at "Crimes with Python's pattern matching" < https://www.hillelwayne.com/post/python-abc/ > for example), on the other hand, assembly languages, or Lisp, or Forth, have a very simple design.

    Simple as in "easy to use"? Rust is easy, write code, fix what the compiler tells you you did wrong. Joke aside, Go is quite easy to use and while I personally don't like this language, I get why it replaced Python in a lot of use cases.

    Also, once you get used to the OTP framework, Erlang/Elixir/Gleam/any beam language are quite easy to use and have less footguns than Python.

    ---

    "safer than Rust" is too vague. Is it memory safety? type safety? thread safety? cosmic ray safety? A mix of all of that?

    Let's guess you meant "memory safety". All languages with a Garbage Collector are "memory safe".

    ---

    On a semi-unrelated note, I've been working on https://letlang.dev

    It's a language inspired by Erlang/Elixir (same concurrency model) that compiles to Rust code (the runtime use tokio). It is immutable, have no Garbage Collector thanks to Rust semantics, and dynamically typed.

    I haven't run any benchmark (it's not even finished, I've been working on the specification before continuing the implementation), but I guess it could be slower than a rock.

    ---

    For some recommendations, have you looked at Zig? Nim? Hare?

      https://ziglang.org/

  • InfluxDB

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  • letlang

    Functional language with a powerful type system.

  • "Faster than C", I saw people write C code slower than a Python equivalent. So I have to admit, I don't know what it means for a language to be fast, because it depends on the algorithm being implemented.

    ---

    "simpler than Python", what does "simple" mean?

    Simple design? Python's design is very complex (take a look at "Crimes with Python's pattern matching" < https://www.hillelwayne.com/post/python-abc/ > for example), on the other hand, assembly languages, or Lisp, or Forth, have a very simple design.

    Simple as in "easy to use"? Rust is easy, write code, fix what the compiler tells you you did wrong. Joke aside, Go is quite easy to use and while I personally don't like this language, I get why it replaced Python in a lot of use cases.

    Also, once you get used to the OTP framework, Erlang/Elixir/Gleam/any beam language are quite easy to use and have less footguns than Python.

    ---

    "safer than Rust" is too vague. Is it memory safety? type safety? thread safety? cosmic ray safety? A mix of all of that?

    Let's guess you meant "memory safety". All languages with a Garbage Collector are "memory safe".

    ---

    On a semi-unrelated note, I've been working on https://letlang.dev

    It's a language inspired by Erlang/Elixir (same concurrency model) that compiles to Rust code (the runtime use tokio). It is immutable, have no Garbage Collector thanks to Rust semantics, and dynamically typed.

    I haven't run any benchmark (it's not even finished, I've been working on the specification before continuing the implementation), but I guess it could be slower than a rock.

    ---

    For some recommendations, have you looked at Zig? Nim? Hare?

      https://ziglang.org/

  • v-mode

    šŸŒ» An Emacs major mode for the V programming language.

  • Iā€™m pretty optimistic about V, it so far has great language ergonomics, solid performance, and memory safety through its ā€œautofreeā€ memory feature flag. https://vlang.io/

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