Carbon (programming language)

lastmod 2022-07-25created 2022-07-254 edits

(For the app that renders source code as pretty images, see Carbon)

Carbon is an experimental general-purpose programming language created at Google to be a "C++ successor language". It was first presented to the public by Chandler Carruth at the CppNorth conference in July of 2022. The language intends to fix several perceived shortcomings of C++ but otherwise provide a similar feature set. The main goals of language are readability and "bi-directional interoperability" so there will not be a language barrier like Rust had. The language will be designed and developed on GitHub, as opposed to the ISO process C++ uses.

The language is developed as a free and open source project under the Apache License (version 2).

Features

• Aims to be a language compatible with the existing ecosystem, like Java → Kotlin and JavaScript → TypeScript.
  • Rust is said to succeed C++, but moving the C++ ecosystem to Rust is difficult
• Very easy migration from C++ → Carbon, with bidirectional compatibility
• Uses LLVM to deliver performance on par with C++
• Interoperates with existing C++ code, from inheritance to templates
• Can use existing C++ build systems as they are
• Easy for C++ developers to learn

See also

• Programming language
• C++
• Rust

Favorite site

• Github - carbon-lang