Solod: Go can be a better C

aarvin_roshin•about 2 hours ago

The author's original blog post, which goes into some more detail: https://antonz.org/solod

bb88•about 3 hours ago

How does it deal with pointers if everything is stack based? You can't really return a pointer to something on the stack because it could get overwritten between when you return it and when you access it.

wrs•about 1 hour ago

Exactly as well as C does, it seems.

    func newPerson() *Person {
        p := Person{Name: "Alice", Age: 30}
        return &p
    }

becomes

    static main_Person* newPerson(void) {
        main_Person p = (main_Person){.Name = so_str("Alice"), .Age = 30};
        return &p;
    }

Quoting the FAQ: "So itself has few safeguards other than the default Go type checking. It will panic on out-of-bounds array access, but it won't stop you from returning a dangling pointer or forgetting to free allocated memory. Most memory-related problems can be caught with AddressSanitizer in modern compilers, so I recommend enabling it during development by adding -fsanitize=address to your CFLAGS."

So saying you get the "safety of Go" is a bit of a stretch.

zabzonk•about 2 hours ago

Well, it does say:

"Everything is stack-allocated by default; heap is opt-in through the standard library."

So it supports both stack and heap, and I guess static allocation too.

leecommamichael•about 3 hours ago

I really like this idea. I was reading a post earlier about how Go generics are implemented, and how they're sort of leveraging root GC-types in the "runtime" to avoid the same bloat as monomorphization causes in, say, C++. I wonder how Solod will do that? I guess plain monomorphization? I guess that's fine since C compilers are so speedy.

faangguyindia•about 1 hour ago

i've been using Go on backend now all the time.

Wish something like this existed instead i am stuck with flutter and react native on Mobile.

When will a time come when i can use some functional languages like Haskell or a plain boring language like Go for making apps with OTA ability for mobiles.

As vibe coding takes over, app store approval will become slowerer and OTA is really great when you need to make quick changes!

You can OTA each day and do base app release to store once each week.

i think this maybe the space where very little work is being done.

asp_hornet•about 1 hour ago

Not sure of your exact constraints but is something like this useful?

https://hyperview.org/

jay_kyburz•about 1 hour ago

I've been using Go and Raylib to make a game lately and I really don't have a problem with garbage collection. It's so fast that it's not having an impact on my frame rate.

I was a little worried at the start because nobody would normally consider Go for games, but I did a bunch of tests and found it's just no big deal.

(I'm focused on game play and not interested in pushing hardware to its limits.)

SarikayaKomzin•about 1 hour ago

I’ve been considering using Odin and Raylib for this because of its similarities to Go, but using Go itself is appealing. Do you have any good resources for what you’ve learned, or is it an unexplored frontier?

sarchertech•38 minutes ago

I’ve used Odin and Raylib for some prototypes, and it’s terrific!

jay_kyburz•about 1 hour ago

I don't know If I can be very helpful, I'm using gen2brain's binding [1].

I started about a year ago asking the AI very beginner questions about Go and 3d math. I think it did steer me down some wrong path sometimes and of course I did some dumb things myself too. I'm not using Agents, just asking questions about features, then writing the code myself by hand.

I really like the power of the tools and the constraints of the language in Go. It's been fun so far.

[1] https://github.com/gen2brain/raylib-go

It's interesting you would mention Odin because I spend a fair amount of time playing with it as well. It was easy to get started and fun. Fast, easy to iterate. The reason I moved away was not the language itself, but I felt it was too much Ginger Bills baby. Oh, and managing memory is no fun. I want to make game play, not think about allocations :)

heyitsdaad•about 2 hours ago

Insert Look What They Need To Mimic A Fraction Of Our Power meme here.

Solod: Go can be a better C

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