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Show HN: Salt – a systems language with Z3 theorem proving in the compiler
24 days ago
- Salt provides verified safety at compile time without runtime overhead using Z3-proven contracts.
- It uses arena allocation instead of garbage collection or a borrow checker, ensuring memory safety and preventing leaks.
- Salt achieves performance parity with clang -O3 across various benchmarks, including ML inference, kernels, networking, and rendering.
- The language features pipe operators for chaining, optional chaining for errors, and f-strings for type-safe formatting without allocation.
- Salt's package manager, sp, offers dependency verification, content-addressed caching, and monorepo support for fast, reliable builds.
C3 0.8.2 a Modest Improvement
11 days ago
- C3 0.8.2 release includes language ergonomics improvements such as reusable target templates for libraries and generic constdef.
- New reflection capabilities for generics, allowing inspection of generic instantiations with methods like is_generic, generic_qname, and generic_args.
- Bitstruct members now have bitoffset and bitsize properties for detailed bit-level reflection.
- Additional @param options: own, init, and drop for parameter annotations to aid static analysis and documentation.
- Asm stack alignment is now opt-in using @align, fixing previous mismatches with C behavior.
- Windows subsystem can be set directly, with all subsystems available for applications like EFI.
- Standard library additions include Atomic.compare_exchange, array::contains_slice, log::register_dynamic_category, and improved String methods.
- Fixes address issues in stdlib (e.g., String.to_double, JSON serialization, IPv6 parsing) and compiler (e.g., $stringify, constdef, untypedlist handling).
- Contributions from the C3 community through PRs, issues, and discussions are acknowledged, with specific contributors listed.
Zig by Example
7 hours ago
- Zig is a general-purpose programming language designed for robust, optimal, and reusable software.
- Official documentation is available for further learning.
- Zig by Example is a hands-on introduction using annotated example programs.
- The examples are written for version 0.16; check your version if something isn't working.
Zig In-Depth Overview
4 hours ago
- Zig is a small, simple language with no hidden control flow, no hidden memory allocations, no preprocessor, and no macros.
- It offers four build modes (Debug, ReleaseSafe, ReleaseFast, ReleaseSmall) that can be mixed at scope granularity for performance and safety.
- Zig is faster than C due to whole compilation unit optimization, careful illegal behavior, SIMD vector types, and advanced CPU features enabled by default.
- The standard library integrates with libc but does not depend on it; Zig can produce very small static executables (e.g., 9.8 KiB for Linux).
- Zig uses optional types instead of null pointers, requiring explicit handling of null with `orelse` or `if`/`while`.
- Memory management is manual; all allocation functions accept an allocator parameter, and `defer`/`errdefer` simplify resource management.
- Errors are values that cannot be ignored, handled with `catch` or `try`, and can be exhaustively checked with `switch`.
- Zig supports compile-time code execution, reflection via `@typeInfo`, and generic data structures via functions returning types.
- C libraries can be directly imported with `@cImport` without bindings; Zig can also compile C code and export functions with the C ABI.
- Cross-compilation is a first-class feature; Zig ships libc for all supported targets, enabling cross-compilation without system files.
- Zig includes a build system and package manager with support for dependency fetching, system integration, and reproducible builds.
- Target support is tiered, and Zig is friendly to package maintainers with deterministic builds and JSON download pages.

programming language

Show HN: Salt – a systems language with Z3 theorem proving in the compiler

C3 0.8.2 a Modest Improvement

Zig by Example

Zig In-Depth Overview