Nanolang: A tiny experimental language designed to be targeted by coding LLMs

Summary

nanolang A minimal, LLM-friendly programming language with mandatory testing and unambiguous syntax. NanoLang transpiles to C for native performance while providing a clean, modern syntax optimized for both human readability and AI code generation. Self-hosting: NanoLang supports true self-hosting via a Stage 0 → Stage 1 → Stage 2 bootstrap ( make bootstrap ); see planning/SELF_HOSTING.md. Quick Start Install git clone https://github.com/jordanhubbard/nanolang.git cd nanolang make build This builds the compiler: bin/nanoc - NanoLang compiler (transpiles to C) Hello World Create hello.nano : fn greet(name: string) -> string { return (+ "Hello, " name) } shadow greet { assert (str_equals (greet "World") "Hello, World") } fn main() -> int { (println (greet "World")) return 0 } shadow main { assert true } Run it: # Compile to native binary ./bin/nanoc hello.nano -o hello ./hello Platform Support Tier 1: Fully Supported ✅ NanoLang is actively tested and supported on: Ubuntu 22.04+ (x86_64) (x86_64) Ubuntu 24.04 (ARM64) - Raspberry Pi, AWS Graviton, etc. (ARM64) - Raspberry Pi, AWS Graviton, etc. macOS 14+ (ARM64/Apple Silicon) (ARM64/Apple Silicon) FreeBSD Tier 2: Windows via WSL 🪟 Windows 10/11 users: NanoLang runs perfectly on Windows via WSL2 (Windows Subsystem for Linux). Install WSL2: # In PowerShell (as Administrator) wsl -- install - d Ubuntu After installation, restart your computer, then: # Inside WSL Ubuntu terminal git clone https://github.com/jordanhubbard/nanolang.git cd nanolang make ./bin/nanoc examples/language/nl_hello.nano -o hello ./hello Why WSL? NanoLang's dependencies (SDL2, ncurses, pkg-config) are Unix/POSIX libraries. WSL2 provides a full Linux environment with near-native performance on Windows. Note: Native Windows binaries ( .exe ) are not currently supported, but may be added in a future release via cross-compilation. Tier 3: Experimental 🧪 These platforms should work but are not actively tested in CI: macOS Intel (via Rosetta 2 on Apple Sili...