Why I am writing a new programming language

By Ian Fisher, 2 September 2021 Subscribe

This summer, I have been working on a new programming language called Venice. Venice is modern, high-level, and statically-typed. It aims to combine the elegance and expressiveness of Python with the static typing and modern language features of Rust. When it is finished, it will look something like this:

import map, join from "itertools"

enum Json {
  JsonObject({string: Json}),
  JsonArray([Json]),
  JsonString(string),
  JsonNumber(real),
  JsonBoolean(bool),
  JsonNull,
}

func serialize_json(j: Json) -> string {
  match j {
    case JsonObject(obj) {
      let it = ("\(key): \(serialize_json(value))" for key, value in obj)
      return "{" ++ join(it, ", ") ++ "}"
    }
    case JsonArray(values) {
      return "[" ++ join(map(values, serialize_json), ", ") ++ "]"
    }
    case JsonString(s) {
      return s.quoted()
    }
    case JsonNumber(x) {
      return string(x)
    }
    case JsonBoolean(x) {
      return string(x)
    }
    case JsonNull {
      return "null"
    }
  }
}

At a minimum, Venice will include:

• Built-in list, map, and set types
• Structured data types (like structs in C, Rust, and Go)
• Algebraic data types and pattern matching
• Interface types
• A foreign-function interface
• Syntactic sugar like keyword and default function arguments, string interpolation, and list and map comprehensions
• A build system, code formatter, linter, and package manager

Why write a new programming language? For the past five years, Python has been my primary programming language, and in that time I have come to both appreciate its strengths and rue its weaknesses. The language is beginning to show its age: dynamic typing is no longer in vogue; algebraic data types, pattern matching, and non-nullable types, formerly confined to academia, are now mainstream; package managers have become ubiquitous; concurrency is no longer a niche feature. Still, no other language has come as close to my ideal as Python has. In Venice, I hope to take what I love about Python—its readability, expressiveness, and elegance—and combine it with what I love about other languages.

Detailed information about Venice is available in the official tutorial and the language reference.¹ If you are interested in Venice, please check out the project on GitHub, and feel free to reach out to ian@iafisher.com with any comments, questions, or suggestions about the language. ∎