Purpose

So what's this whole spec thing about anyway? Good question! This document lays down what programs written in our language look like and how they should behave. Think of it as the official rulebook, covering:

The representation of programs — How code gets written down and structured

The syntax and constraints — What's valid to write and what'll make the compiler go "nah, bro"

The semantic rules — What your code actually means and what it does when it runs

Implementation limits — The boundaries of what conforming implementations need to handle

What We're Trying to Achieve

Look, the main goal here is pretty straightforward: create a clear, consistent, and unambiguous spec that captures what the language actually is and how people use it. This thing serves a few purposes:

Portability, dude. Write once, run anywhere (well, on any conforming implementation). Like, imagine you write a killer sorting algorithm on your laptop. That same code should work on an embedded device, a server farm, or your friend's weird custom hardware project. No rewrites, no platform-specific hacks — just works.

Help out the implementors. Give folks building compilers and interpreters a solid reference to work from. When someone sits down to build a new compiler or port the language to a new architecture, they shouldn't have to guess what behavior X is supposed to produce. The spec tells them exactly what needs to happen.

Teaching and learning. Make it easier for people to pick up the language and understand what's going on. Whether you're a student learning your first systems language or a veteran dev picking up something new, the spec should help you understand not just what works but why it works that way.

Programmer reference. Be the go-to source when you need to know "wait, how does this actually work?" You know those moments when you're debugging at 2 AM and you need to know the exact evaluation order of an expression? The spec's got your back.

How We Approach This

Honestly? It's a balancing act. Think of it like surfing — you've got to stay on the board while forces are pulling you in different directions. Too far one way and you wipe out. The trick is finding that sweet spot where everything works together.

We're constantly juggling different goals:

Portability vs. machine-specific stuff. We want code to work everywhere, but sometimes you need to get down to the metal and do hardware-specific things. Both are valid. Like, say you're writing code for both a Raspberry Pi and a beefy server. The spec lets you write portable code that works on both, but it also doesn't stop you from writing assembly inline or using platform-specific intrinsics when you need that last bit of performance on one platform. The spec defines what's portable and what's not, so you can make informed choices.

New ideas vs. stability. Fresh concepts are rad, but we don't want to break the core of what makes the language tick. Every year there are new papers about cool type system features or memory management techniques. Some of them are genuinely useful! But we're not gonna bolt on every new idea that comes along if it means your existing code stops compiling. We'll adopt proven innovations that fit the language's philosophy, but stability trumps novelty.

Clarity vs. existing code. We're going for crystal-clear definitions, but we're not gonna invalidate everyone's existing programs just to be pedantic. Sometimes the historically "messy" behavior is what people actually rely on. So we document it clearly, even if it's not the most elegant thing in the world. Better to have a slightly awkward spec than to break thousands of working programs.

Consistency vs. real-world use. We resolve weird ambiguities and contradictions that popped up in different implementations over time. For example, if three major compilers do one thing and two do another, we look at what makes sense for users, what the original intent was, and which behavior leads to fewer bugs. Then we pick one and document it.

Battle-Tested Patterns

Most of what you'll see in this spec comes from what people are already doing in the wild — battle-tested, proven patterns. But what makes something "battle-tested"?

It's been used in production. Not just toy programs or academic examples, but real systems that people depend on. If a pattern consistently works in deployed code across different domains, that's evidence it's sound.

It survives contact with reality. Good patterns hold up when you throw edge cases at them, when hardware behaves weirdly, when users do unexpected things. Patterns that seemed clever in theory but caused bugs in practice don't make the cut.

It's stood the test of time. Some patterns have been around for decades because they fundamentally work. We don't reinvent the wheel just to be different. If pointer arithmetic has worked for 50 years and people still find it valuable, we keep it.

On the flip side, some patterns that were common got left out because they were footguns. They might have been widespread, but if they consistently led to bugs or made code harder to understand, we looked for better alternatives or added guardrails.

What This Spec Covers

We're focusing on the important stuff: what's new, what needed clarification, and what changed. We're not gonna waste time justifying every piece of syntax that already works fine.

This spec is designed to work for everyone, whether you're:

Running an interpreter that executes code directly, or building a heavy-duty optimizing compiler with all the bells and whistles.

Working on embedded systems with tight ROM constraints, or running massive multi-user server environments.

Think of this spec as a treaty between the people building the language tools and the people writing code. It defines what both sides can expect from each other. Fair deal, right?