Roadmap

Vale's medium-term goal is to prototype the more advanced performance features, and finally benchmark.

• 0.1, done 2021: Foundational features (see below) and Generational References
• 0.2, done May 2022: FFI, Higher RAII, Modules, Faster Compiles
• 0.2.1, Summer 2022: Templates -> Generics
• 0.3, Late 2022: Basic region borrow checking, Pure calls, immutable regions
• 0.4, Early 2023: Seamless Structured Concurrency, Fearless FFI, Perfect Replayability
• 0.5, Summer 2023: Incremental + parallel compilation, inline data, C++-equivalent Unsafe Mode
• 0.6, Late 2023: Isolates and Cells
• 0.6.1, Early 2024: Optimization, Benchmarking

We'll also be publishing articles biweekly during all this. There will be some main themes:

The Next Decade in Languages series will talk about things that we think will make great strides in the next decade, and unknown gems with a lot of potential.

The Language Simplicity Manifesto series will talk about how to reduce or rearrange a language's inherent complexity. We hope that this will open the door to simpler languages.

The Perfect Replayability series will talk about how languages can help solve the problem of reproducing bugs.

The Memory Safety Grimoire series will talk about various memory safety building blocks that languages might incorporate.

The Thoughts on an Automatic Rust series will talk about Rust's innovations, and how other languages might incorporate them seamlessly.

Externs

• Primitives
• Copying structs
• Copying interfaces
• Struct handles
• Interface handles
• Generate headers
• Module prefixing
• Extern interfaces
• Fearless FFI
• Perfect Replayability

Inlines

• Final structs
• Vary structs
• Final interfaces
• Vary interfaces

Regions

• Basics
• Read-only Regions
• Seceding
• Seamless Concurrency

Structs

• Derive drop
• Explicit auto-drop
• constructor<T>
• Destructor Parameters
• Shortcalling

Interfaces

• Open Shortcalling
• Sealed Constructors
• Sealed Shortcalling
• Variants
• Variant Indexing

Generics

• Concepts
• Static Eaching
• Metaprogramming

Misc

• Must-use
• Private, public

Patterns

• Equating
• Extractors
• Mutating

Operators

• Bail
• Map, FlatMap

Allocators

• Arena
• Single Pool
• Shared Pool
• Multi Pool

LLVM Codegen

• Continue on panic
• Threading
• Replayability

Concurrency

• Coroutines
• Structured Concurrency
• Threads
• Mutexes

Optimization

• Generational Memory
• Gen-check Elimination
• Hybrid-Generational Memory

Possibilities

• Self-Hosting
• JVM/CLR Backend
• VS/IDEA Plugins

Functions

• UFCS
• Infix Calling
• Lambdas
• Magic Params
• Abstract Functions
• Virtual Functions
• Extern Calls
• Overloads
• Pure Functions

Structs

• Mutability
• Auto-drop
• Constructors

Interfaces

• Mutability
• Open Constructors

References

• Shared Refs
• Owning Refs
• Moving
• Constraint Refs
• Weak Refs
• Varying/Final

Modules

• Modules
• Import statements
• Test-only Modules
• Standard Library

Arrays

• Mutability
• Statically-sized
• Runtime-sized
• Make via Lambda

Constructs

• Set
• If
• While
• Each
• Match
• EachI
• If Let
• If Let Else
• Break, Continue

Patterns

• Locals
• Destructuring

ADTs

• Tuples
• Opt
• Result

LLVM Codegen

• Native Executables
• Resilient Mod
• Constraint Mode
• Unsafe Mode

Operators

• Short-circuiting
• Owning methods
• Expect

Ergonomics

• Compile Errors
• Syntax Highlighting

Generics

• Functions
• Structs/Interfaces
• Const Generics