5 ms·

Carbon: high level programming language that compiles to plain C

48 points by flexterra 14y ago

daenney 14y ago
This is going to be rather confusing, I actually thought someone accidentally reinvented Carbon, https://developer.apple.com/carbon/ https://developer.apple.com/carbon/. I realise Apple's Carbon doesn't compile to C but my brain's transderivational search just ignored that fact.
- delinka 14y ago
  Writing Carbon that calls Carbon. Let's call this act Magnesium because ... fusion.
- fyolnish 14y ago
  Instead he reinvented something closer to Objective-C.
- mistercow 14y ago
  Apple's Carbon also isn't a language, but rather an API.
SparrowOS 14y ago
I wrote my compiler from scratch -- no dependencies. God says... 31:7 And they warred against the Midianites, as the LORD commanded Moses; and they slew all the males. 31:8 And they slew the kings of Midian, beside the rest of them that were slain; namely, Evi, and Rekem, and Zur, and Hur, and Reba, five kings of Midian: Balaam also the son of Beor they slew with the sword. 31:9 And the children of Israel took all the women of Midian captives, and their little ones, and took the spoil of all their cattle, and all their flocks, and all their goods. 31:10 And they burnt all their cities wherein they dwelt, and all their goodly castles, with fire. 31:11 And they took all the spoil, and all the prey, both of men and of beasts.
michaelfeathers 14y ago
It's odd to see compilation to C as a main selling point.
- alexchamberlain 14y ago
  Some of us rather like C...
  - eternalban 14y ago
    C is eternal. Have you tried Go?
    - alexchamberlain 14y ago
      I have not... Should I?
      - eternalban 14y ago
        Check out the std lib: http://golang.org/src/pkg/ http://golang.org/src/pkg/ -- that's canonical Go code. It's my language of choice for personal projects. A neat and compact language that is very trivial to pick up, feels light, and yet sufficiently subtle to intellectually engage your mind. Very productive, good performance, and very portable. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxaD_trXwRE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxaD_trXwRE caveat: /imho/ the runtime is not yet fully cooked. ETA is Go1.1 (end of year I believe) for beefed up internals.
  - mistercow 14y ago
    Sure, but that doesn't make it a good intermediate representation for a programming language. I really like CoffeeScript, but compiling to it would be insanity. That said, there are some good reasons for compiling to C. Not every architecture has a backend for LLVM yet, after all.
    - slurgfest 14y ago
      Some would say "I really like JavaScript, but compiling to it would be insanity." And yet CoffeeScript is there. How is that better than a language which compiles to C?
jedbrown 14y ago
Without a source-level debugger, I see little advantage relative to COS, which is C, but has a more advanced object and type system than Carbon. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1192791 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1192791 https://github.com/CObjectSystem/COS https://github.com/CObjectSystem/COS
- wbhart 14y ago
  There's less typing for the programmer than in COS as far as I can tell. And productivity is an important improvement.
  - eswangren 14y ago
    Typing is your bottleneck? Sure, I like short and sweet code too, but that's hardly at the top of the list of productivity boosters.
bcl 14y ago
This is going to need better documentation than a Yacc description if it is going to catch on.
- andrewflnr 14y ago
  There's example code here, http://home.kpn.nl/pt.kleinhaneveld/carbon/example.html http://home.kpn.nl/pt.kleinhaneveld/carbon/example.html, for what it's worth. Pretty pedestrian, from my perspective.
shadowmint 14y ago
I wish projects like this wouldn't force you to install their libraries in order to play with them. Sure, it's just /usr/local, but @#$#@$@# it's annoying when you have to make install on the dependent library before the core application will install. Use scons. or a makefile. or cmake. Or build a static binary. I don't care; but look at the go source archive for an example of how to do this right. This isn't a good first touch of a project: ./configure: line 12296: syntax error near unexpected token `CO2,' ./configure: line 12296: `PKG_CHECK_MODULES(CO2, libco2-1.0 >= 0.1.2,,as_fn_error $? "required module missing" "$LINENO" 5)' hint: you'll notice autoconf isn't in the list above. :P
- 055static 14y ago
  It's is one of life's small pleasures when programs (useful programs) compile fast and with relative simpicity. If you want to experience this, try www.sigala.it/sandro/ and cutils. There's a links to it on the OP's page. Programs as UNIX filters, written with flex and bison. Beautiful. I like this OP because he includes a grammar file. If every programmer that tries making his own language did this, the world would be a better place. Did he also include the .l file in the src? I'm too lazy to look. I think they should include those too. It makes the whole thing easier to understand (and modify). I too get annoyed with having to install the author's own libs. Sometimes these libs are better than the standard ones (e.g. everyone knows C's stdio sucks). If the special libs are fixing something that needs fixing, I'm OK with using them. But nine times out of ten, that's not the case. For this sort of thing, i.e. C code generation, I still like the LISP's that generate C.
jryan49 14y ago
Reminds me of https://live.gnome.org/Vala https://live.gnome.org/Vala
nnq 14y ago
When the first thing I read about a language it on it's description page is "compiles to X" or "runs on Y", this is definitely a sign that the language ha NOTHING INTERESTING TO OFFER whatsoever. Adding insult to injury, underneath is a bulletted list of language features that any language worth it's salt has them! And please... "Named constructors"... WTF?! (If someone wants to be mean, he could simply compare this feature-wise with one of the Scheme dialects that compile to C...)
- jasim 14y ago
  Not every language needs to be one of those that changes the way we think about programming. It is perfectly fine to experiment on mundane languages by adding mundane features. Incremental improvement is a good thing and it is too early to just write off this because it seems to be un-interesting. I'm sure this project was extremely interesting to the author - maybe from a different perspective than yours. > (If someone wants to be mean, he could simply compare this feature-wise with one of the Scheme dialects that compile to C...) I'm not being mean here, but if someone really wanted to be..
  - njharman 14y ago
    > not every languages needs to change ... way we think about programming. > I'm sure this project was extremely interesting to the author No, but neither does(should) every new language be posted and upvoted to HN.
    - Xcelerate 14y ago
      If it's upvoted, then the HN crowd finds the language interesting. If not, then it will fade away like every other article that doesn't get votes does.
  - njharman 14y ago
    > not every languages needs to change ... way we think about programming. > I'm sure this project was extremely interesting to the author No, but neither does(should) every new language be posted and upvoted to HN.
WalterBright 14y ago
Compiling to C puts some significant constraints on your language. For example, C doesn't have COMDAT support, thread local storage, exception handling is limited to setjmp/longjmp, static uplevel function links are a problem, symbolic debug info is going to all look like C, etc.
- ExpiredLink 14y ago
  It's just ubiquitous.
- tptacek 14y ago
  I'm not sure I understand how C's lack of high-level exceptions makes a difference for a high-level language that compiles down to C. The high-level language can provide exception support, just like large-scale C packages sometimes do using longjmp. Similarly, are you really suggesting that C programs can't have thread-local storage?
  - WalterBright 14y ago
    setjmp/longjmp tends to be pretty primitive, compared to decent eh support. Standard C does not have thread local storage.
    - tptacek 14y ago
      Are you missing the fact that we're talking about using C as a substrate for a higher-level language?
Ogre 14y ago
The Example link contains, I think, only two things that aren't valid C++. "self." (could be replaced by this-> or simply nothing in C++) and the ["stdio.h"] int printf... syntax for including just one thing. Two and a half things I guess: the methods of MyObject are accessed by main but not declared public (C++ is private by default) I don't know if that's good or bad, but it's not very compelling to me.
FraaJad 14y ago
While not discouraging the original author, Vala from Gnome has taken this thinking a lot further. Vala is actually quite fun to use even for non-GUI projects. And it doesn't have to depend on GTK libraries to produce working programs. https://live.gnome.org/Vala/Documentation https://live.gnome.org/Vala/Documentation

48 points by flexterra 14y ago

This is going to be rather confusing, I actually thought someone accidentally reinvented Carbon, https://developer.apple.com/carbon/ https://developer.apple.com/carbon/. I realise Apple's Carbon doesn't compile to C but my brain's transderivational search just ignored that fact.

delinka 14y ago
Writing Carbon that calls Carbon. Let's call this act Magnesium because ... fusion.
fyolnish 14y ago
Instead he reinvented something closer to Objective-C.
mistercow 14y ago
Apple's Carbon also isn't a language, but rather an API.

SparrowOS 14y ago

I wrote my compiler from scratch -- no dependencies. God says... 31:7 And they warred against the Midianites, as the LORD commanded Moses; and they slew all the males. 31:8 And they slew the kings of Midian, beside the rest of them that were slain; namely, Evi, and Rekem, and Zur, and Hur, and Reba, five kings of Midian: Balaam also the son of Beor they slew with the sword. 31:9 And the children of Israel took all the women of Midian captives, and their little ones, and took the spoil of all their cattle, and all their flocks, and all their goods. 31:10 And they burnt all their cities wherein they dwelt, and all their goodly castles, with fire. 31:11 And they took all the spoil, and all the prey, both of men and of beasts.

michaelfeathers 14y ago

It's odd to see compilation to C as a main selling point.

alexchamberlain 14y ago
Some of us rather like C...
- eternalban 14y ago
  C is eternal. Have you tried Go?
  - alexchamberlain 14y ago
    I have not... Should I?
    - eternalban 14y ago
      Check out the std lib: http://golang.org/src/pkg/ http://golang.org/src/pkg/ -- that's canonical Go code. It's my language of choice for personal projects. A neat and compact language that is very trivial to pick up, feels light, and yet sufficiently subtle to intellectually engage your mind. Very productive, good performance, and very portable. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxaD_trXwRE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxaD_trXwRE caveat: /imho/ the runtime is not yet fully cooked. ETA is Go1.1 (end of year I believe) for beefed up internals.
- mistercow 14y ago
  Sure, but that doesn't make it a good intermediate representation for a programming language. I really like CoffeeScript, but compiling to it would be insanity. That said, there are some good reasons for compiling to C. Not every architecture has a backend for LLVM yet, after all.
  - slurgfest 14y ago
    Some would say "I really like JavaScript, but compiling to it would be insanity." And yet CoffeeScript is there. How is that better than a language which compiles to C?

jedbrown 14y ago

Without a source-level debugger, I see little advantage relative to COS, which is C, but has a more advanced object and type system than Carbon. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1192791 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1192791 https://github.com/CObjectSystem/COS https://github.com/CObjectSystem/COS

wbhart 14y ago
There's less typing for the programmer than in COS as far as I can tell. And productivity is an important improvement.
- eswangren 14y ago
  Typing is your bottleneck? Sure, I like short and sweet code too, but that's hardly at the top of the list of productivity boosters.

bcl 14y ago

This is going to need better documentation than a Yacc description if it is going to catch on.

andrewflnr 14y ago
There's example code here, http://home.kpn.nl/pt.kleinhaneveld/carbon/example.html http://home.kpn.nl/pt.kleinhaneveld/carbon/example.html, for what it's worth. Pretty pedestrian, from my perspective.

shadowmint 14y ago

I wish projects like this wouldn't force you to install their libraries in order to play with them. Sure, it's just /usr/local, but @#$#@$@# it's annoying when you have to make install on the dependent library before the core application will install. Use scons. or a makefile. or cmake. Or build a static binary. I don't care; but look at the go source archive for an example of how to do this right. This isn't a good first touch of a project: ./configure: line 12296: syntax error near unexpected token `CO2,' ./configure: line 12296: `PKG_CHECK_MODULES(CO2, libco2-1.0 >= 0.1.2,,as_fn_error $? "required module missing" "$LINENO" 5)' hint: you'll notice autoconf isn't in the list above. :P

055static 14y ago
It's is one of life's small pleasures when programs (useful programs) compile fast and with relative simpicity. If you want to experience this, try www.sigala.it/sandro/ and cutils. There's a links to it on the OP's page. Programs as UNIX filters, written with flex and bison. Beautiful. I like this OP because he includes a grammar file. If every programmer that tries making his own language did this, the world would be a better place. Did he also include the .l file in the src? I'm too lazy to look. I think they should include those too. It makes the whole thing easier to understand (and modify). I too get annoyed with having to install the author's own libs. Sometimes these libs are better than the standard ones (e.g. everyone knows C's stdio sucks). If the special libs are fixing something that needs fixing, I'm OK with using them. But nine times out of ten, that's not the case. For this sort of thing, i.e. C code generation, I still like the LISP's that generate C.

jryan49 14y ago

Reminds me of https://live.gnome.org/Vala https://live.gnome.org/Vala

nnq 14y ago

When the first thing I read about a language it on it's description page is "compiles to X" or "runs on Y", this is definitely a sign that the language ha NOTHING INTERESTING TO OFFER whatsoever. Adding insult to injury, underneath is a bulletted list of language features that any language worth it's salt has them! And please... "Named constructors"... WTF?! (If someone wants to be mean, he could simply compare this feature-wise with one of the Scheme dialects that compile to C...)

jasim 14y ago
Not every language needs to be one of those that changes the way we think about programming. It is perfectly fine to experiment on mundane languages by adding mundane features. Incremental improvement is a good thing and it is too early to just write off this because it seems to be un-interesting. I'm sure this project was extremely interesting to the author - maybe from a different perspective than yours. > (If someone wants to be mean, he could simply compare this feature-wise with one of the Scheme dialects that compile to C...) I'm not being mean here, but if someone really wanted to be..
- njharman 14y ago
  > not every languages needs to change ... way we think about programming. > I'm sure this project was extremely interesting to the author No, but neither does(should) every new language be posted and upvoted to HN.
  - Xcelerate 14y ago
    If it's upvoted, then the HN crowd finds the language interesting. If not, then it will fade away like every other article that doesn't get votes does.
- njharman 14y ago
  > not every languages needs to change ... way we think about programming. > I'm sure this project was extremely interesting to the author No, but neither does(should) every new language be posted and upvoted to HN.

WalterBright 14y ago

Compiling to C puts some significant constraints on your language. For example, C doesn't have COMDAT support, thread local storage, exception handling is limited to setjmp/longjmp, static uplevel function links are a problem, symbolic debug info is going to all look like C, etc.

ExpiredLink 14y ago
It's just ubiquitous.
tptacek 14y ago
I'm not sure I understand how C's lack of high-level exceptions makes a difference for a high-level language that compiles down to C. The high-level language can provide exception support, just like large-scale C packages sometimes do using longjmp. Similarly, are you really suggesting that C programs can't have thread-local storage?
- WalterBright 14y ago
  setjmp/longjmp tends to be pretty primitive, compared to decent eh support. Standard C does not have thread local storage.
  - tptacek 14y ago
    Are you missing the fact that we're talking about using C as a substrate for a higher-level language?

Ogre 14y ago

The Example link contains, I think, only two things that aren't valid C++. "self." (could be replaced by this-> or simply nothing in C++) and the ["stdio.h"] int printf... syntax for including just one thing. Two and a half things I guess: the methods of MyObject are accessed by main but not declared public (C++ is private by default) I don't know if that's good or bad, but it's not very compelling to me.

FraaJad 14y ago

While not discouraging the original author, Vala from Gnome has taken this thinking a lot further. Vala is actually quite fun to use even for non-GUI projects. And it doesn't have to depend on GTK libraries to produce working programs. https://live.gnome.org/Vala/Documentation https://live.gnome.org/Vala/Documentation