elpc

GNU Licensed compiler for the Ellipsis ('elp) language, very much a work in progress programming language inspired by the likes of modern; platform-specific, UI languages and tools such as Swift UI and Jetpack Compose. Compiles to native binaries for Android, iOS, Mac, Windows and Linux and html/css/javascript for the web.

Why am I doing this?

“For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.” ― Richard P. Feynman

Firstly, apparently I'm a glutton for punishment but mostly because I've been a software developer for a long time and not once have I seen a language designed for the one thing I spend most of my time doing. Creating software for people to use that is safe. Why do we settle for shoe horned languages and frameworks or the argument of "just do it natively for each platform?"

I want a single language that compiles to native binaries that target each platform, not a web view, not JavaScript, not owned or deeply funded/owned by sponsorship by a large corporation but a single, source of truth language that allows anyone to build great software with no matter what needs to get done.

I will never "sell" this language or it's rights and I don't ever plan to "profit" on this language, nor do I plan to create any kind of bureaucratic body to "manage" it or "progress" it. This is FOSS through and through. We; as the community have a right and an obligation to ensure our software chains and so, I encourage you to fork it, learn it, improve it and submit PRs and together we create a language that we own, control and distribute across platforms. There is nothing to protect, nothing to copyright, trademark or otherwise.

Actively; and consciously, design away mechanisms designed to screw anyone else over.

Elp?

Originally I was calling it ellipsis, for no other reason than I thought it sounded cool but it evolved into 'elp which is a slang/colloquialism for "help" here in England.

Obligatory "hello world"

Targeting a device with a CLI, we can simply println("hello world") in our main function.

import { println } from "elp/stdio"

fn main {
    println("hello world")
}

An "app" hello world.

import { App, Window } from "elp/app"
import { Column, Row, Text } from "elp/app/components"

@App
export fn HelloWorld -> App {
	App {
		Window {
			Column {
				Row {
					Text("Hello World")
				}
			}
		}
	}
}

More complete example apps can be found in the examples folder.

What am I actually trying to do here?

having spent a large amount of my career across the entire spectrum of software development I've been privvy to a whole range of problems with coding. Specifically the cross platform-ness of any given technology and it's always been a gripe of mine that there wasn't actually a native way to do anything across platforms that didn't involve knowing how to write safe C++ or using enormous DSLs like Qt with it's own compilation problems.

Thus I have started to try and remedy that by creating a new language, that is under the hood actually a compiler on top of a very large Directed Graph (I have to document this further but it's very cool.)

my feature wishlist

Design a language:

• that's easy to understand, test and deploy cross-platform
• that's safe to use
  • Memory safe
  • Type safe
  • Intellectual Property safe.
• that enforces testing
• that enforces the best accessibility standards possible
• has built in tooling for
  • Package management
  • Profiling and debugging with llvm
  • Testing with coverage
  • Supply chain management
  • Opsec management
  • Ci/cd integration