firescript

firescript is a statically and strongly typed programming language that compiles natively or to JavaScript + Wasm. It is designed to be simple, powerful, and easy to learn while remaining expressive for advanced applications.

Disclaimer: firescript is currently in development and is not yet feature-complete. The language and compiler are subject to change. Not everything described in this document is implemented or working. Current builds may leak resources; the design goal is deterministic destruction via an ownership model.

Features

• Static & Strong Typing: Enhances code readability and reliability.
• Simple Syntax: Combines the best of C, Java, JavaScript, and Python.
• Everything is Explicit: No implicit conversions or hidden behavior.
• Versatile Compilation: Supports native binaries and JavaScript output.
• Cohesive Design: All parts of the language work seamlessly together.
• Deterministic Ownership Model (planned): Ownership, moves, borrows, and explicit cloning instead of a tracing garbage collector. See the Memory Management Model.

Example

// Define a function that returns the nth Fibonacci number
int8 fibonacci(int8 n) {
    if n <= 1 {
        return n
    }
    return fibonacci(n - 1) + fibonacci(n - 2)
}

// Print the first 10 Fibonacci numbers
for (int8 i : range(9)) {
    print(fibonacci(i))
}

Benchmarks

Recursive Fibonacci

Algorithm pseudo‑code:

function fibonacci(n) {
    if n <= 1 {
        return n
    }
    return fibonacci(n - 1) + fibonacci(n - 2)
}

fibonacci(47)

Fibonacci of 47 is used to provide a reasonable runtime for comparison. Test is run 5 times and the average time is reported. Tests are run on an AMD Ryzen 7 5800H processor.

Language	Time (seconds)
C	3.5s (avg)
firescript ⭐	4.2s (avg)
Rust	5.8s (avg)
Zig	6.5s (avg)
Go	13.2s (avg)

Getting Started

Prerequisites

• C Compiler (GCC recommended, but any C compiler should work as long as its location is in the CC environment variable)
• Python 3

Installation

# Debian/Ubuntu
sudo apt-get install gcc python3 libgmp-dev libmpfr-dev

# Fedora/RHEL/CentOS
sudo dnf install gcc python3 gmp-devel mpfr-devel

# Arch/Manjaro
sudo pacman -S gcc python3 gmp mpfr

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/alec-jensen/firescript.git
cd firescript

Compiling and Running a Program

# Compile a firescript program
python3 firescript/firescript.py program.fire

# Execute the compiled program
./output/program

Documentation

Full documentation is available at: https://alec-jensen.github.io/firescript/

Learn more about planned memory semantics: Memory Management Model

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please open an issue or submit a pull request on GitHub.

License

firescript is released under the MIT License. See LICENSE for details.