I started learning Go about 3 months ago and it quickly became one of my favorite languages. It feels like C with a bunch of Python niceties thrown in. And performance isn’t super critical in my work so being garbage collected is fine with me.
Nim. Small compiler, small executables, easy to understand (except the macros, I still can’t get my head around them).
FreePascal. Yeah yeah, Pascal’s dead, etc etc, but it being so verbose and strict certainly help programmers (or at least me) keeping things somewhat tidy.
Also shoutout to V
C++, with some Skill
/s
but seriously, I don’t know any language with a good, C/Cpp-like Syntax (so not Rust), with a good compiler (again not Rust). So I’m sticking to Cpp.
You should check out zig, its compiler can even be used for c/c++. If you have time to listen to an interview, this developer voices interview on zig explains some of the advantages of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_oqWE9otaE&t=3970s
Thinking about zig for some stuff.
Mostly because those rusticles are pissing me off.
After months of no practice, I forget quite a lot of stuff about them, regardless of language; therefore, none
EDIT: None of them is memory safe, that is
Nim
Crystal, but only because I’m a full time Ruby on Rails (and sometimes Hanani!) programmer.
It’s fantastic, and I had an excuse to use it at work when we needed to gather PHP Watchdog logs from a MySQL database and format, output them to STDOUT in a Kubernetes environment. (This was necessary for our log monitoring tools expecting data in a standard way, AKA not connecting to a database. 🤦♂️)
I know there are perhaps better options out there (Go, Rust, etc.) but from a Rubyist’s point of view Crystal gives you that “flow” from working in a beautiful language but with the performance boost of compiled software.
I’m anxiously waiting for Crystal to be able to compile for Windows so game development with it can get a kickstart
You forgot that beauty - “undefined behavior”!
Memory-safety can guarantee only so much safety! C++ can still blow up in your face, even with all the alleged memory-safety built into C++, thanks to all the UB traps in C and C++.
Rust is the closest language that has no such “gotchas”.
C# is good too. If you havent heard of lobster you should look into it.
C# isn’t exactly compiled, at least not into machine language. It is transpiled into byte code that is run on a virtual machine that on turn is an interpreter/JIT-compiler.
Depending on why someone is asking for a compiled language that may or may not be a problem, because to the one writing the code it looks like a compiled language, but to the one running it it looks like an interpreted one.
Not necessarily these days! With NativeAOT, C# can be compiled to machine code.
It is compiled into bytecode. A transpiler translates to another programming language with the same level of abstraction. A compiler translates into a level that is nearer to or machine code.
D
C++ with -Wall -Werror, and no pointer diddling.
Its definitely best to try and avoid raw pointers, but even if you try really hard I found it’s not really possible to get a Rust-like experience with no UB.
Even something as simple as
std::optional- you can easily forget to check it has a value and then boom, UB.The C++ committee still have the attitude that programmers are capable of avoiding UB if they simply document it, and therefore they can omit all sanity checks.
std::optionalcould easily have thrown an exception rather than UB but they think programmers are perfect and will never make that mistake. There are similar wild decisions with more recent features like coroutines.They somehow haven’t even learnt the very old lesson “safe by default”.
If I wanted memory unsafety I think I would consider Zig instead of C++ at this point.
Rust
With no context, this could be an honest attempt to learn about different tools, a thinly veiled set-up to promote a specific language, or an attempt to stir up drama. I can’t tell which.
It’s curious how such specific conditions are embedded into the question with no explanation of why, yet “memory safe” is included among them without specifying what kind of memory safety.
Yeah, arguably the only answer to this question is Rust.
Java/C#/etc. are not fully compiled (you do have a compilation step, but then also an interpretation step). And while Java/C#/etc. are memory-safe in a single-threaded context, they’re not in a multi-threaded context.
C# has native compilation capability, thanks to Native AOT
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/core/deploying/native-aot/
How are they not memory safe in a multi-threadded context?
There’s nothing to prevent data races. I myself have fallen into the trap of using the same list from multiple threads.
I don’t think data races are generally considered a memory safety issue. And a lot of languages do not do much to prevent them but are still widely considered memory safe.
Yeah, that is why I prefixed that whole comment with “arguably”.
I feel like the definition of memory safety is currently evolving, because I do think data races should be considered a memory safety issue.
You’ve got a portion of memory and access to it can be done wrongly, if the programmer isn’t careful. That’s what memory safety is supposed to prevent.Rust prevents that by blocking you from passing a pointer for the same section of memory into different threads, unless you use a mutex or similar.
And because Rust sets a new safety standard, I feel like we’ll not refer to Java and such as “memory-safe” in twenty years, much like you wouldn’t call a car from the 90s particularly safe, even though it was at the time.
The question mine as well be “what is your favorite compiled language?”. There is a lot of overlap between the possible answers.
C on Morello (or any other capability machine).
<?php declare(strict_types=1)😏 😁
🏃♂️💨
As others have said, Haskell and Rust are pretty great. A language that hasn’t been mentioned that I REALLY want to catch on, though, is Unison.
