In 2019, while contributing to the C2 language, I started up "C3" as a pet project while waiting for pull requests to be approved...
Now it's 6 years later and C3 well on its way to 1.0, having released 0.7.0 last week.
Unlike other C alternatives, C3 tries to evolve C – but without concern to backwards compatibility to the latter.
What it adds to C is among other things:
- Module system
- Semantic macros and compile time introspection
- Lightweight generic modules
- Zero overhead errors
- Build-in slices and SIMD types
- Gradual contracts
- Built-in checks in debug mode
You can find more details on the site: https://c3-lang.org It might be interesting to look at the examples: https://c3-lang.org/language-overview/examples/ so see how the language looks for some simple examples.
Some other links that might be interesting follows:
I've posted about C3 on HN before, notably
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24108980
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27876570
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32005678
Here are some interviews on C3:
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UC8VDRJqXfc
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rS8MVZH-vA
Here is a series doing various tasks in C3:
- https://ebn.codeberg.page/programming/c3/c3-file-io/
Some projects:
- Gameboy emulator https://github.com/OdnetninI/Gameboy-Emulator/
- RISCV Bare metal Hello World: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0iAJxx6Ok4E
- "Depths of Daemonheim" roguelike https://github.com/TechnicalFowl/7DRL-2025
Show HN: The C3 programming language (C alternative language)
github.com