Maybe I have a too strict definition of systems programming languages, but I would never call a GC language a systems programming language. Who would use an operating system that suddenly stops the entire world because some random language's runtime wants to collect its memory garbage?
Probably they meant that GC introduces a certain level of uncertainty, whereas OS or "systems" programming leans heavily towards manual handling (except when the compiler allows to avoid it, not the runtime).
I think you have some stereotypes about GC. In fact, current GC technology only requires a very short STW. Of course, I agree with your opinion, so this is not the final form of nature. I will find a better technology to assist GC.
I think it's rather the other way around. What parent said, even though they prefixed it with a 'maybe' to make their statement less confronting, is that you used the term "systems programming language" too freely. As is also the case with Go.
If people keep doing that, the term will eventually loose meaning.
Maybe in 20 years, it will have eroded enough that something like Python will be called a "systems programming language". I mean after all, a printf statement in C also parses the format string at runtime. Who is to say the fact that all of the code is interpreted should thusly exclude something like Python? I'm being sarcastic, if that wasn't obvious.
Nature claims 'concise'ness in it's README's opening paragraph. That is laudable. It's even more laudable if the conciseness would also be reflected in the use of natural language (no pun) that describes it.
Calling it a "systems programming language" while using GC is IMHO eroding the meaning of the term.
Something meaning X and someone including Y and then someone pointing out that X does not include Y has thusly nothing to do with stereotypes here.
Tbh, I've completely abandoned the concept of a systems programming language because the primary benefit of the concept seems to be to argue over it. There's practicality (eg can i link this into the kernel?) and then there's hand-waving about how it feels to a developer, and the conversation seems almost entirely subsumed by the latter.
See also: "is C a high-level or low-level language?" Just shoot me instead, please.
Somewhat agree, but it depends. I agree that core of the operating system (kernel) should be responsive, but there are many tasks in the operating system that don't require immediate response and can be run in batch. Usually these are higher-level decisions, such as any housekeeping tasks like file backup and indexing, workload reprioritization and optimization, system update and reconfiguration, and the like.
"Nature is...
A general-purpose open-source programming language and compiler designed to provide developers with an elegant and concise development experience, enabling them to build secure and reliable cross-platform software simply and efficiently."
That's true. However the website also promotes it as a systems programming language here and there. For example in the same homepage it says "Perfect for Systems Programming: Operating systems and IoT" and some other places like here: https://nature-lang.org/docs/get-started
go is ill suited for many systems programming environments. It works well on servers and larger iot devices with 512+ mib off ram, but not great on things with tighter constraints. We tried to use it for our netstack implementation for years and ultimately came to the conclusion we needed to switch to a language with greater control. Storage, RAM, and CPU usage were all improved with the switch. I don't consider it a systems programming language but rather something approaching systems programming.
I am the author of the nature programming language. You can find code examples and a playground to try it out on the official website at https://nature-lang.org I would appreciate your feedback.
Can you add methods to any type? There is an example of adding a method to a builtin type (string) -- can you add also add a method to a union type?
Any plans to add some sort of enum type? If yes, will it be possible to add methods to enums?
How do you support (or intend to support) Unicode? It says "Strings use ASCII encoding" -- why not UTF8?
The example with a timeout channel does not show how / when the timeout will be triggered. Is this a special kind of channel?
It says "Packages will be synchronized to the $HOME/.nature/package directory" -- will this respect the XDG standard directory structure, which defaults to $HOME/{.cache,.local,.config}?
1. nature can add methods to built-in types, example
fn int.to_string() {
}
I haven't considered whether union types can add methods, so I tested it, and it seems to be possible, but this may cause some unexpected behavior, so maybe I should disable this possibility for now.
type test_t = int|null
fn test_t.hello() {
println('hello world')
}
2. Enum support is planned. I plan to use type declarations. Why hasn't enum been added yet? Nature has adopted a conservative syntax design, and I hope to hear more opinions and avoid affecting existing functionality as much as possible when adding syntax features.
type weekly = enum {}
So methods can be added to enums.
fn weekly.found() {
}
3. UTF-8 should be solvable via a library. I haven't thought much about UTF-8 yet, but if it can enhance nature's usability, I'll implement it as soon as possible. Usability is a key focus for nature moving forward.
4. Select{} timeout handling does require a special timer channel, which will be addressed in the standard library. Currently, it can only be handled via ch.try_recv() and ch.try_send(), which do not block the channel.
5. Actually, this is the first time I've heard of the XDG standard. I will study and understand the specification.
---
I am not an experienced programming language designer, so thank you for your questions. I will carefully consider them.
I am more in favor of flat code organization, but I probably won't use C to implement a compiler again, as it involved a lot of unnecessary work. Zig or Rust would be better choices.
“Tao follows nature” (道法自然) is a phrase from classical Chinese philosophy, and it is the design philosophy behind the nature programming language. It can be understood as being natural and intuitive. I hope that nature can build upon Go's ‘less is more’ philosophy and achieve ‘Tao follows nature.’
Unfortunately, nature is not SEO-friendly, so the name has received a lot of criticism. Therefore, I am considering changing it to a name that starts with ”na”
LLVM is very big, takes ages to compile and compiles code relatively slowly. Also because it was designed to compile C there are occasionally C-isms that make it suboptimal for other languages with different properties. (Although a hobby project is never going to beat its performance even accounting for that.)
Faster compilation speeds, more customized error handling, and convenient cross-compilation. I believe this is a promising direction for the future development of programming languages. Zig has already made significant progress in this area.
Probably the compilation time is better than it would be with LLVM. On the other hand I doubt that codegen and therefore performance is on par with LLVM.
This is an advertisement, and I usually don't put “no LLVM” in the title or use it as a promotional feature.
I posted this project on HackNews a few times, but it quickly sank to the bottom. Maybe “no LLVM” might pique some people's interest in the project, so I added it. Actually, I posted this link a few days ago and had already given up on it, but unexpectedly, it suddenly appeared on the HackNews homepage.
I now need some attention, which will give the Nature project more capital.
That attitude as described feels like chucking a large portion of the benefit you get from leaving C out the window.
But...
> But at that point, why does it need to be part of the language? Would not a standard library module suffice?
This indicates zig is desired to ship with unicode support—just not part of the core language runtime. Now this I can support—unicode doesn't require core runtime support. Most programs don't have a need for unicode text normalization, for instance, so why would you need this without linking in a standard library? But the idea of not shipping unicode in your standard library rightfully died decades ago.
Notably, this doesn't imply:
* source code being ascii
* string literals being ascii
* unicode string processing not being immediately available in the standard environment
So I'm not sure which behavior is being described here, but I certainly consider utf8 support to be table-stakes for language design in 2025. Without this a language is a toy. I'm not going back to using ICU and will fight anyone who encourages me to.
The syntax of nature is different from golang. But everything else is the same as golang, including goroutine, GC, channel, cross-compilation and deployment, and even free programming ideas, less is more, and so on.
I think these features are the best thing about golang, even in front of all programming languages. That's why I'm trying to see if I can create a better golang.
In the early stages of availability, I would not advise others to switch to nature, as this would be irresponsible. When nature is sufficiently advanced, the situation will be different.
You're right, but nature doesn't seem to be a good name, it gets a lot of criticism because its not search engine friendly. Maybe I should change the name before nature becomes popular.
Love this, definitely rooting for this to get big!
I think the goal is great. My dream language is something "in between Go and Rust", Go but with more expressive types, Rust-light, something along those lines. This seems like it is hitting that sweet spot.
Imo Go gets a lot right when it comes to productivity, but the type system always annoys me a bit. I understand the choice for simplicity, but my preference is different.
Rust is quite enjoyable, especially when it comes to the type system. But, kinda the opposite of go, it's a lot, maybe too much for me, and I frequently don't know what I'm doing haha. I also don't really need Rust level performance, most things I do will run totally fine with GC.
So Go with some extra types, same easy concurrency, compilation and portability sounds like a winner to me.
Readit News
That said, well done for making this.
Lilith: x86-64 OS written in Crystal (github.com/ffwff). [1]. And Crystal has GC.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21860713
If people keep doing that, the term will eventually loose meaning. Maybe in 20 years, it will have eroded enough that something like Python will be called a "systems programming language". I mean after all, a printf statement in C also parses the format string at runtime. Who is to say the fact that all of the code is interpreted should thusly exclude something like Python? I'm being sarcastic, if that wasn't obvious.
Nature claims 'concise'ness in it's README's opening paragraph. That is laudable. It's even more laudable if the conciseness would also be reflected in the use of natural language (no pun) that describes it.
Calling it a "systems programming language" while using GC is IMHO eroding the meaning of the term.
Something meaning X and someone including Y and then someone pointing out that X does not include Y has thusly nothing to do with stereotypes here.
See also: "is C a high-level or low-level language?" Just shoot me instead, please.
"Nature is... A general-purpose open-source programming language and compiler designed to provide developers with an elegant and concise development experience, enabling them to build secure and reliable cross-platform software simply and efficiently."
I wouldn't care if my network daemon was written in Python or not, but I would care if the networking stack itself was.
But suppose the very top of stack is high frequency trading system or traffic light controller. Car brakes...
Depending on your stack, determinism may or may not be a key part. And that is only possible if determinism is guaranteed all the way down.
Can you add methods to any type? There is an example of adding a method to a builtin type (string) -- can you add also add a method to a union type?
Any plans to add some sort of enum type? If yes, will it be possible to add methods to enums?
How do you support (or intend to support) Unicode? It says "Strings use ASCII encoding" -- why not UTF8?
The example with a timeout channel does not show how / when the timeout will be triggered. Is this a special kind of channel?
It says "Packages will be synchronized to the $HOME/.nature/package directory" -- will this respect the XDG standard directory structure, which defaults to $HOME/{.cache,.local,.config}?
fn int.to_string() { }
I haven't considered whether union types can add methods, so I tested it, and it seems to be possible, but this may cause some unexpected behavior, so maybe I should disable this possibility for now.
type test_t = int|null
fn test_t.hello() { println('hello world') }
2. Enum support is planned. I plan to use type declarations. Why hasn't enum been added yet? Nature has adopted a conservative syntax design, and I hope to hear more opinions and avoid affecting existing functionality as much as possible when adding syntax features.
type weekly = enum {}
So methods can be added to enums.
fn weekly.found() { }
3. UTF-8 should be solvable via a library. I haven't thought much about UTF-8 yet, but if it can enhance nature's usability, I'll implement it as soon as possible. Usability is a key focus for nature moving forward.
4. Select{} timeout handling does require a special timer channel, which will be addressed in the standard library. Currently, it can only be handled via ch.try_recv() and ch.try_send(), which do not block the channel.
5. Actually, this is the first time I've heard of the XDG standard. I will study and understand the specification.
---
I am not an experienced programming language designer, so thank you for your questions. I will carefully consider them.
If you were to do this again, how would you organize the source code differently?
Unfortunately, nature is not SEO-friendly, so the name has received a lot of criticism. Therefore, I am considering changing it to a name that starts with ”na”
Definitely a weird thing to advertise.
I posted this project on HackNews a few times, but it quickly sank to the bottom. Maybe “no LLVM” might pique some people's interest in the project, so I added it. Actually, I posted this link a few days ago and had already given up on it, but unexpectedly, it suddenly appeared on the HackNews homepage.
I now need some attention, which will give the Nature project more capital.
Dead Comment
But I'm confused on why strings use ascii encoding instead of utf-8. What if you need non-ascii characters?
But...
> But at that point, why does it need to be part of the language? Would not a standard library module suffice?
This indicates zig is desired to ship with unicode support—just not part of the core language runtime. Now this I can support—unicode doesn't require core runtime support. Most programs don't have a need for unicode text normalization, for instance, so why would you need this without linking in a standard library? But the idea of not shipping unicode in your standard library rightfully died decades ago.
Notably, this doesn't imply:
* source code being ascii
* string literals being ascii
* unicode string processing not being immediately available in the standard environment
So I'm not sure which behavior is being described here, but I certainly consider utf8 support to be table-stakes for language design in 2025. Without this a language is a toy. I'm not going back to using ICU and will fight anyone who encourages me to.
- a better type system, that includes union types, and makes types non-nullable by default
- pattern matching
- designed with generics from the beginning
- try/catch error handling. This is controversial, and some people like checking every return value for errors, but it is a common complaint about go
- it looks like it is meant to have better c interop than go
And in a very good sense.
v has the same syntax as golang and is derived from it. But otherwise, v is moving closer to rust, with immutability, bounds checking, and so on.
Here's a discussion of vlang's implementation of coroutine https://github.com/vlang/v/discussions/11582 Until recently, vlang has not supported coroutines very well
The syntax of nature is different from golang. But everything else is the same as golang, including goroutine, GC, channel, cross-compilation and deployment, and even free programming ideas, less is more, and so on.
I think these features are the best thing about golang, even in front of all programming languages. That's why I'm trying to see if I can create a better golang.
In the early stages of availability, I would not advise others to switch to nature, as this would be irresponsible. When nature is sufficiently advanced, the situation will be different.
Clean source code too, impressive project
I think the goal is great. My dream language is something "in between Go and Rust", Go but with more expressive types, Rust-light, something along those lines. This seems like it is hitting that sweet spot.
Imo Go gets a lot right when it comes to productivity, but the type system always annoys me a bit. I understand the choice for simplicity, but my preference is different.
Rust is quite enjoyable, especially when it comes to the type system. But, kinda the opposite of go, it's a lot, maybe too much for me, and I frequently don't know what I'm doing haha. I also don't really need Rust level performance, most things I do will run totally fine with GC.
So Go with some extra types, same easy concurrency, compilation and portability sounds like a winner to me.