vsl-beta v0.1.0-alpha.1

Download

You can either build from source (see Building) or installed a pre-compiled binary/executable:

Building

Building isn't too diffiult. Usually you'll want to install a pre-built binary but if you're feeling adventurous or just want to help build VSL (:D) building from source is simple:

$ git clone --recursive https://github.com/vsl-lang/VSL
$ npm install
$ npm run build

Do note, branch of the develop branch to make changes. All PRs go there. Other commands:

$ npm run coverage # Generates testing coverage reports
$ npm test         # Runs all tests
$ npm run dev      # Development build
$ npm run docs     # Make docs
$ npm run lint     # Lint code and make sure not crap

Do note you don't need to generate docs unless you want them for yourself because the CI will automatically generate docs.

Development Info

• Docs are located here.
• A bunch of READMEs are located in the dirs which do more complex things

Problem

Today they are quite a few languages, some popular ones you may of heard of are:

• Python
• Java
• JavaScript
• C/C++

and while these are all great and well (and have worked). Here are the things one wants from a programming language:

• Portability (C/C++ lack here)
• Ease of Use (Java & C/C++ lack here, but arguable)
• Rapid prototyping (Java, C/C++, and even JS ES2015+)
• Saftey: type, memory, etc. (JS & Python lack)
• Bare-metal speed (yeah...)
• Powerful and close-to-hardware (JS, Python, and Java lack)

So VSL aims to solve all of these problems. By leveraging the LLVM bytecode engine you're able to reach the limits of portability.

Additionally due to careful design and implementation choices, VSL compiles to very similar ASM to what a C-implementation would produce.

By using syntax sugar, and powerful type-negotiation, VSL has one of the best type deduction algorithms. Combined with low compilation overhead, VSL can generate code with bare minimum boilerplate and guarunteed saftey at compile-time.

VSL uses high-level syntax to be able to write code that works for all types of programmers, whether you are functional, OO, scripting, or low-level engineer, VSL works for embedded applications up to server apps.

VSL is also reliable by using trusted libcurl, and glibc backends which are well established and highly developed libraries for performing tasks at the low-level. Due to this, VSL has powerful low-level pointer interopability and the power of full OO-classes, but assembly-level bit alignment.

Examples

VSL functions both as a scripting and a full-blown language so two alterntaives are given for all programs. That said, they are many more ways to write many of these programs, neither more correct than the other.

Hello, World!

print("Hello, World")

func main(args: String[]) {
  print("Hello, World!")
}

Fizzbuzz

let fizzbuzz :: (of: Int) -> String
fizzbuzz(i where i % 3, i % 5) -> "FizzBuzz"
fizzbuzz(i where i % 3) -> "Fizz"
fizzbuzz(i where i % 5) -> "Buzz"
fizzbuzz(i) -> String(for: i)

func fizzbuzz(to i: Int) {
    for i in 0..i {
        print fizzbuzz(of: i)
    }
}