Hi all, I’ve moved the Silica language and compiler repository from private to public.
Silica is a functional programming language and runtime designed for industry to use to build operating systems, virtual machines, IOT software, etc, with actors and supervisors among the things that Erlang/OTP folks will find familiar. It has been under development for slightly less than 6 months, so please read this warning loudly: Silica is pre-pre-pre-pre-release. It is not yet robust, is under near constant revision, and it is in no way, shape, or form ready for production use. Many use and edge cases haven’t been tested. Also, it is only usable on MacOS right now. Don’t shoot me, I’ll get it working on other things soon, fingers crossed.
The next major step is FFI. If you are interested and would like to give feedback specifically on the FFI implementation before hit happens, the design work for that is in:
compiler/silica-compiler/design_documents/silica_ffi_wrapper_specification.md
The greater than 1350 Continuous Integration trials and the self-hosted compiler, in the silica-compiler subdirectory, are probably the best place to start if you want to see what Silica currently looks like and how it works. The self-hosted compiler uses an older and minimal language design, before actors, supervisors, and the new lists, so don’t take that code as being canonical. It will eventually be modified to simplify it using the full specification as part of Phase 2.
There are things in Silica you will like. There are things in Silica you won’t like. That’s OK. Silica isn’t designed to replace the BEAM langauge you love. It is designed to help the languages you love run at chip speeds, see Project BEES mentioned below.
Helpful, growth-oriented feedback from the BEAM community that aids me in building Silica and eventually Project BEES is very welcome. There is so much still to do and so much done that can be improved.
FYI, Project BEES is now beginning its ideation phase in parallel with the Silica compiler development. It will be a thin shim-like codebase written in Silica replacing the BEAM and allowing Elixir, Gleam, Erlang, etc. to run securely and safely at chip speeds.
Thanks ahead of time.