Circle Alternatives

circle reviews and mentions

• TinyCompiler: A Compiler in a Week-End
  12 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 20 Feb 2025

  I made a facetious comment to parry that of pjmlp, whom also made a facetious comment wrt to compiler complexity and what "one person" can do.

  https://github.com/seanbaxter/circle

  It is like if one tried claiming that Fabrice Bellard was an example of a median dev.

  The number of C++ compilers written by one person is one. And because of this, it gives us no predictive power in what pjmlp was trying to assert.

  I agree with you, Albert and Lorentz and Riemann got caught in the rhetorical crossfire.

• What's new in C++26 (part 1)
  6 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 7 Sep 2024

  I for one started working on a new project in C++ rather than Rust. I think it's unclear whether Rust is going to be the successor at this point. It's probably never going to pick up in the games industry, QT is C++ (and Rust bindings will always be second class or they could end up unmaintained), has better compile times and is said to be undisputed when it comes to high performance. Obviously the tool for the job factor is most critical.

  Career wise, many people are picking up Rust and almost no one is picking up C++, while experienced C++ devs either retire or switch to a higher level language due to landscape change. I would trust supply and demand to be in favour of C++ 10 years from now.

  There are also attempts to make C++ more memory safe like Carbon[1] or Circle compiler [2]. If they succeed, why would anyone want to switch to Rust? Also Rust is not ideal for security from a different perspective - I think the lack of a package manager is one C++ strongest points. After working for 9 years with npm, you really appreciate that the dependency you install is usually just a single dependency (even an option for a single header file is common), when there's a package manager, people will abuse it (like install a package with 3 dependencies of its own for something that could be 50 LOC copy-paste) and managing the security of the supply chain is nearly impossible (it will be a legal requirement soon in EU though).

  Anyway, I wanted to ask. How is the contracting market looking in C++ world? I'm guessing it depends on the domain heavily? I'm mainly asking about QT and anything that would be desktop / mobile apps / systems programming except video games, but I'm curious in general.

  [1] https://github.com/carbon-language/carbon-lang

  [2] https://github.com/seanbaxter/circle

• Why Not Just Do Simple C++ RAII in C?
  1 project | news.ycombinator.com | 22 May 2024

  This is more or less what Sean Baxter was trying to do with https://www.circle-lang.org/.

  Of course, this requires buying into a set of tooling and learning a lot of specific idioms. I can't say I've used it, but from reading the docs it seems sound enough.

• Rusty.hpp: A Borrow Checker and Memory Ownership System for C++20
  3 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 5 May 2024
• How difficult would it be to make a c++ compiler
  1 project | /r/cpp | 13 Nov 2023

  Sean Baxter created a front end c++ compiler by himself, using llvm for the back end and the gcc or clang stl. I think it took him a couple of years. https://www.circle-lang.org/. Before this happened I heard a couple of different people claiming that there would never be a totally new compiler as it was too much work.

• Toward a TypeScript for C++"
  8 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 4 Nov 2023

  The real Typescript for C++ is Circle.

  https://www.circle-lang.org/

  Just like Typescript to JavaScript, the syntax is an evolution of what already exists, not a completely different syntax.

• A Metaobject Protocol for C++ [pdf]
  2 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 16 Aug 2023

  Sean Baxter's Circle [1] is arguably the spiritual successor to MOP.

  [1] https://www.circle-lang.org/

• Circle Evolves C++ [video]
  2 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 16 Aug 2023

  Context: https://github.com/seanbaxter/circle/blob/master/new-circle/...

  Note that Circle is not an F/OSS compiler as someone pointed out before. This however doesn't make Circle less relevant, because it is actually a testament to show that C++ could have been much better without the claimed breakage. If Circle does provide a number of desirable features and its compiler can be built by a single person, then why shouldn't the committee do the same?

• My (Herb Sutter's) C++ Now 2023 talk is online: “A TypeScript for C++”
  4 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 14 Aug 2023

  From all wannabe C++ replacements candidates, the only language that is really a TypeScript for C++, is Circle.

  For whatever reason, Herb Sutter decided to ignore this language on the presentation.

  https://www.circle-lang.org/

  This is the only one with the syntax based on C++, incrementally changing the features via #pragma settings.

  "Circle Fixes Defects, Makes C++ Language Safer & More Productive"

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7fxeNqSK2k

  "Circle Evolves C++"

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1ZDOGDMNLM

• File for Divorce from LLVM
  9 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 29 Jun 2023
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