nemo is a small procedural programming language that compiles to Wasm GC
Check out the Nemo playground for example programs. It runs entirely in your browser, so you can play around and experiment however you like.
I "know" how to do a lot of things in compilers theoretically, conceptually, or in isolation. This project helps me verify I can actually put them together and understand them well enough to put into practice.
I think Wasm GC is a fantastic opportunity. It could make creating new high-level interesting languages fun, and accessible. Part of making that a reality is building tooling, examples, and teaching materials. I hope Nemo can help in that effort.
Depending on how the language evolves it might become part of my compilers course at TH Cologne.
Most features can be directly mapped to Wasm GC constructs. I'm just listing them here:
- Function imports
- Top-level functions
- Globals
- Primitive types: i32, f32, bool, unit
- Composite types: Structs (nominal), Arrays (structural)
- Typed function references (no closures)
- if-expressions
- while
- Infix operators for most numeric instructions
- Built-in functions/intrinsics for all other numeric functions
Features we implement "on-top"
- Variants & Pattern matching
- Lazy initialization for non-const globals
- Type directed operator resolution (+ can mean both i32.add and f32.add)
- Type directed field resolution for struct access
- Nested set targets for composite types:
set p.particles[2].vx = 10.0 - Block scoping