Snow*
ℹ️ Table of content
❔ What is Snow* ?
Snow* is a programming language which knew several generations:
-
The first one called RainDrop was an Object-Oriented programming language.
It really never took off in the first place, being always a theoritical project more than anything else. -
The second one was called #* (SharpStar)
It was an ASM-like language with some inconsistences (registers holding only up to one value).
It was the real first programming language made here from nothing. The VM was slow, the compiler inefficient. -
The third generation was the first called Snow*.
It was still an ASM-like, but more developped than the previous one. It contained more instructions, the VM was faster, the compiler more efficient. -
The fourth generation, Snow*, a procedural programming language.
This generation is built with ANTLR and LLVM to offer power and native compilation.
🖥️ Behind Snow*, a developer, Mesabloo.
I've been working on Snow* from the second generation until now since the beginning of June 2018. I wanted to create my own programming language since the beginning of October/November of 2017. (RainDrop came to life around this time) Because I never really understood how they work, and because I wanted to compile RainDrop into ASM (the Assembly Language), it didn't go far enough to actually be considered a good "experience" (just a basic Lexer + a simple compiling process until the AST generation, where I got stuck).
After this, I switched from Java to C++ and completely changed the syntax of the language, creating my first "ASM-like" language.
And now, I changed it again, and I'm ready to go for it.
📄 What about a free sample ?
Samples can be found here but I will post here a simple Hello, World! program made in Snow*:
(*
* Declaration of the main method. The parameters of it are unrequired, you may write it without.
*
* @param `argc` is of type i8 ;
* @param `argv` is of type array<str> ;
* @return i32
*)
% So that we can use `print()`.
import stdout;
import array;
i32(i8, array<str>) main =
(i8 argc, array<str> argv) => {
print("Hello, World!");
% We print "Hello, World!" in the console.
return 0;
% We return from the function, with an i32 value.
};
(*
This sample is not yet compilable.
Don't try to compile it, you'll get many errors.
*)
✴️ Special thanks to
People from many Discord servers helping me when I need help. Links to them will be put down below.
- NaN - Not a Name : a francophone programming related Discord server, very nice and helpful:
- The Programmer's Hangout : a nice community about programming with many developers from all around the world:
- Atelier - Création d'un langage de programmation : a francophone Discord server about the creation of programming languages, with some languages creator such as me.
- Some other servers where people helped me mentally by being here for me whenever I needed some comfort.
- My friends who put some hope in my project.
- All the people who starred this repository so far. It's really pleasant.
💽 Pieces of software used with their licenses
- ANTLR4, released under BSD-3 clause license, Copyright (c) 2012-2017 The ANTLR Project. All rights reserved
- termcolor, released under BSD license, Copyright (c) 2013 Ihor Kalnytskyi
- LLVM, released under Open Source license, Copyright (c) 2003-2018 University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. All rights reserved.
- Tiny Process Library, released under the MIT License, Copyright (c) 2015-2018 Ole Christian Eidheim
- Argh ! released under the BSD-3 License, Copyright (c) 2016 Adi Shavit