axelang / axe

Axe Axe is a compiled programming language with a focus on type safety, ease of concurrency, and performance. It provides a clean syntax for systems programming with modern and parallel language features. Getting Started • Latest release of the Axe compiler • Documentation on the language • The Visual Studio Code extension for Axe • The LSP, namely Axels, installation involves just downloading it and adding it to PATH. • Saw, a build tool and package manager for Axe Features • **Type Safety**: Safe by default • **Parallelism at the core of the language** Supports parallelism at the language level, making it easy to write programs that can take advantage of multiple CPU cores. • **Clean Syntax**: Intuitive syntax inspired by modern languages • **Standard Library**: Built-in support for numerous data structures and utilities • **Cross-platform**: Works on Windows, macOS, and Linux • **Fast Compilation**: Optimized build system for quick iteration Language Features • Functions and variables, immutability by default • Control flow (if/else, for loops, construct) • Pointers and memory management with high level abstractions • Parallel processing support at the core of the language • Built-in println for debugging Installation Prerequisite Clang compiler Building from Source Without already having an binary, clone https://github.com/axelang/axe-bootstrap.git to get axe latest on POSIX systems. Bootstrapping process: If you already have an axe binary (Windows users can download the .zip from GitHub releases), the build process is simply: Or use with the saw build tool. This will create the executable. Usage Compiling Axe Programs Language Syntax Hello World Tagged Unions Axe supports tagged unions, allowing a value to take one of several typed forms. Each variant has its own fields, and the active variant is determined by the tag: Tagged unions provide a safe and expressive way to model AST nodes, protocol messages, and other variant-based structures. Generics (new in v0.0.6) Generics in Axe allow writing of functions and models that operate on different types while maintaining type safety. You can specify type parameters using square brackets , and use type-specific logic with clauses. Game of Life Roadmap • [x] Control flow constructs, functions, variables, fundamentals... • [x] Immutability by default • [x] Parallel for • [x] Union types • [x] Pure blocks • [x] Syntax ( ) for isolating single threaded behaviours in parallel contexts • [x] Map and reduce clauses • [x] Smart type inference based on RHS of exprs.