CARBON programming language

Status: just an idea

CARBON is an interface-centric programming language named after the concept of an allotropy. It is an experiment in hyper-dynamic programming. Programs do not define concrete representations. Instead, the runtime decides which representation to use. A type's representation can change during its lifetime. Users can opt in to prioritizing certain runtime characteristics, such as speed or memory, per instance. The runtime will run experiments to determine the optimal representation that satisfies the priorities. In some sense, profile-guided optimization at runtime.

Langjam #0002

Langjam's theme is patterns. CARBON treats this relatively lightly:

• identifier rules, e.g. allowing them to be arbitrary Unicode characters, but all characters in each identifier must be in the same Unicode script

Tour

CARBON is an unusual programming language, so it may as well use unusual syntax. Its identifiers look a lot like lisp. Words are conventionally delimited by hyphens, e.g. a-variable. This style, known informally as kebab case, is also seen in Dylan.

Scalar types:

• Atoms: whitespace-delimited, façade

• Numbers: 1, 2.0, -9

• Text: " some words "

• Regular expressions: / [abc]+ /

• Lists: [ 1 2 3 ]

• Sets: { 1 2 3 }

• Dictionaries: { "a" : 1 "b" : 2 "c" : 3 }

All types accept a hyper-parameter, which is what should be maximized by the representation optimizer.

• [ 1 2 3 ] :: { speed }

Identifiers can be Unicode, with some restrictions. Characters within the identifier must belong to the same [Unicode script], although it's legal to include characters from the Common . That is, it is impossible to mix Cyrillic and Tamil in the same identifier.