explaingit

roc-lang/roc

★ 5,652ZigAudience · developerComplexity · 4/5Setup · hard

TLDR

Roc is a new programming language designed to be fast, friendly, and functional, still in active development and not yet at its first stable release, so best suited for early adopters and language enthusiasts.

Mindmap

mindmap
  root((roc))
    What it does
      Functional language
      Fast performance
      Friendly syntax
    Tech Stack
      Zig compiler
      Functional style
    Status
      Pre-release
      Work in progress
    Community
      Zulip chat
      Open contributions
      Corporate sponsors
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Code map

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Things people build with this

USE CASE 1

Experiment with a fast functional programming language before its first public release

USE CASE 2

Follow the development of a new language and contribute to its compiler or documentation

USE CASE 3

Join the Roc community on Zulip to learn functional programming concepts with a friendly group

Tech stack

ZigFunctional Programming

Getting it running

Difficulty · hard Time to first run · 1h+

Roc has not reached its first public release so installation steps are still evolving and may require extra manual steps.

No license information was mentioned in the explanation.

In plain English

Roc is a programming language described as fast, friendly, and functional. It is still under active development and has not yet reached its first public release, which the team refers to as a 0.1 release. The project explicitly states it is a work in progress. Functional programming is a style of writing software where you describe what you want to compute rather than giving step-by-step instructions. Roc takes this approach while aiming to be approachable and performant. The compiler itself is written in Zig, a lower-level language often used for building tools and system software. The README points to several resources for people interested in the language: an installation guide, a tutorial, standard library documentation, example code, and an FAQ page. There is a group chat on a platform called Zulip where people can ask questions and discuss the language. Contributors are welcome to get involved, and the community is described as friendly. The project is supported by a mix of corporate sponsors and individual donors. Corporate sponsors listed include Lambda Class, ohne-makler, and Decem. Individual sponsors at higher tiers are also named. Donations can be made through several platforms including GitHub Sponsors, Every.org, and Liberapay. Because Roc has not shipped a stable release, it is not yet suited for production use. People drawn to it would be developers interested in functional language design or early adopters who want to follow the language's development as it progresses toward its first release.

Copy-paste prompts

Prompt 1
Show me a simple hello world program in Roc and explain what makes it a functional language compared to Python.
Prompt 2
I want to try Roc before its 1.0 release. What are the key functional programming concepts I need to understand to write Roc code?
Prompt 3
How do I install Roc on my machine and run the tutorial examples from the roc-lang/roc repository?
Prompt 4
I want to contribute to the Roc programming language project. What areas need help and how do I get started with the codebase written in Zig?
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