[HN Gopher] Show HN: Mach - A compiled systems language looking ...
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Show HN: Mach - A compiled systems language looking for
contributions
Hi HN, I'm the creator of Mach (https://github.com/octalide/mach
or https://machlang.org). Two days ago, we finally achieved full
self hosting. I wanted to make a post here to show off the language
since this is a big milestone for us. ## TL;DR about the language
for those curious: - There are no external dependencies anywhere
in the pipeline. This includes LLVM, libc bindings, or anything of
the sort (save for the historical bootstrap compiler, which
requires any C compiler and has been phased out completely). -
Mach is extremely opinionated and very anti-magic. WYSIWYG is a
core principal for the language. There are no hidden behaviors,
implicit type conversions, or "automatic features". Simplicity and
stripping away ambiguity are core principals that this language
upholds. - Performance currently lags behind C by about a factor
of only 4x at the time of writing, almost entirely due to the lack
of deep compiler optimizations like autovectorization, which have
not been fully implemented yet. Eventually, Mach will be at least
on par with C. ## Why did I build this? I love low level systems
languages like C, Zig, Go, and (sometimes) Rust, but I wanted
something that actively discourages "cleverness" in favor of long-
term maintainability and overall clarity. Mach is highly
opinionated and explicitly demands verbosity in ways that other
languages are afraid to. Computers aren't magic, and code you write
should not pretend they are. This project initially started out as
a learning opportunity for myself, but grew into a fully featured
language as time went on. There is still a lot I have to learn,
however, and I'm excited to be able to do so as this project
continues to grow into the future. ## Why do I (the reader) care?
If you like C, you'll probably like Mach. Mach takes heavy
inspiration from the "vibe" of writing C, but improves on much of
the syntax, lacks quite a few footguns, "unhides" a lot of internal
mechanisms, and has a FAR better dependency management system. If
you want to play around with a language that is fully capable of
replacing C, and especially if you would like to contribute to its
development, then PLEASE stop by and mess around. ## Where should
I go to check it out? The github repository has a link to our
discord if you'd like to chat with myself or our few other regular
users. My personal account has all of the tooling that exists as
well as a few example repos if you feel inclined to try it out. ##
Will this project by dead in X months? I've been working on this
in the background for over 2 years now. This is a long term project
that I plan to maintain into the indefinite future, with or without
a userbase. If you like the language at all, I highly encourage you
to get involved in its development because it WILL be sticking
around in some capacity forever. I know this was a bit "rambly",
but let me just say that it's been a great joy to work on this
project and I would love any and ALL opinions and contributions,
ESPECIALLY if you hate the language or find a problem that needs
fixing. Let me know what you guys think!
Author : octalide
Score : 19 points
Date : 2026-06-08 23:05 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| scratchyone wrote:
| fully self hosted without any external dependencies is incredibly
| impressive, amazing work
| octalide wrote:
| Thank you. Took a long... long time to get it to even this
| stage, and there's so much more left to do.
| nosioptar wrote:
| I haven't ever made a low level language.
|
| That said, it seems pretty damned impressive to me that mach is
| only four times slower than C, particularly since you've only
| worked on it for two years.
|
| I like the syntax. The example code and a couple files in src I
| looked at were all easy to read.
| voidhorse wrote:
| This looks really nice, great work so far! I see a macOS backend
| is still in development. I'd like to try the language out on
| macOS, so if I find the time I'll try to pitch in!
| throwaway17_17 wrote:
| I find the goals of explicitness and maintainability to be really
| pitched to my current taste. From a quick view it looks like the
| syntax is approaching a local maximum for conforming to
| expectations and not sacrificing the explicitness sought.
|
| As the developer, where do you land on meta-programming for the
| language? I applaud the straight up nature of 'the battery will
| never be included' and the reminder to consider the possibility
| of a feature being a library instead of a syntax or language
| feature. I certainly don't think meta-programming is essential,
| but the ability can contribute to the ease of use for library
| code.
|
| And I'll ask now since it always comes up, where does Mach stand
| on 'advanced' type theory uses for 'low-level' programming? I
| noticed the admonition that safety is the developers job which is
| sure to bring some 'heat' from the memory-safety-is-table-stakes
| crowd, in light of that, where does Mach stand regarding ways to
| ensure 'safety'?
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