OtterLang
Pythonic scripting language that compiles to native code
Details
- External ID
- 45860927
- Source
- HN
- Company
- —
- Product
- OtterLang
- Website domain
- github.com
- Launched
- Nov. 8, 2025
- Cohort
- —
- Upvotes
- 15
- Upvotes percentile
- 0.6102620087336245
- Tags
- —
- Fetched at
- Sept. 7, 2026, 9:25 p.m.
- Updated at
- Sept. 7, 2026, 9:25 p.m.
Description
Hey HN! I’ve been building OtterLang, a small experimental scripting language designed to feel like Python but compile down to native binaries through LLVM.The goal isn’t to reinvent Python or Rust, but to find a middle ground between them:Python-like readability and syntax Rust-level performance and type safety Fast builds and transparent Rust FFI (you can directly import Rust crates without writing bindings)OtterLang is still early and very experimental. the compiler, runtime, and FFI bridge are being rewritten frequently.Please star the repo, and contribute to help this project.
Enrichment
- Theme
- Claude integrations and coding agents
- Vertical
- Horizontal
- Function
- Dev tools
- Audience
- Developer
- AI stance
- Not AI
- Project type
- Hobby / open-source project
- Normalized one-liner
- pythonic language that compiles to native code
- Manually corrected
- False
Could you build this?
No Designing a compiler that emits native code via LLVM requires specialized knowledge of compiler design, ASTs, type systems, and the LLVM infrastructure.
What it would actually take: Requires implementing a lexer, parser, type inference engine, and AST-to-LLVM-IR generation pipeline using LLVM C++ or Rust bindings, along with a custom runtime library. Building this requires deep expertise in formal language theory, LLVM internals, optimization passes, and memory management.
Discussion
9 comments analyzed.
Competitors mentioned: Nim, Go, Python, Codon, SPy
Concerns raised: API design inconsistency (fmt package for stdout instead of io), Unclear how user-defined type conversions are supported, String concatenation and formatting API is cumbersome, Use case unclear (why create this vs existing languages?)
Feature requests: Template strings with compile-time interpolation (like Python PEP 750), String formatting that supports type-safe SQL query generation, Support for user-defined type conversion protocols
Competitors
Other products that read as similar to this one — 152 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.
Attention rank: #61 of 153 (itself plus its competitors, highest first — normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).
Launched 5 days after the earliest competitor.
- Sere Language · ph · 2026-09-14 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.50
- Fuse · hn · 2026-08-02 · 121 upvotes · similarity 0.49
- Genotype: language that compiles to idiomatic TS, Rust and Python · hn · 2026-09-08 · 9 upvotes · similarity 0.49
- Ironwall, a safety-first native programming language and compiler · hn · 2026-06-06 · 16 upvotes · similarity 0.47
- Copy-and-patch compiler for hard real-time Python · hn · 2026-02-11 · 65 upvotes · similarity 0.46
- Scrollcase · ph · 2026-09-16 · 2 upvotes · similarity 0.45
- Myjs An accidental pure-Python JavaScript interpreter · hn · 2026-09-05 · 7 upvotes · similarity 0.45
- Han · hn · 2026-03-14 · 208 upvotes · similarity 0.44
Other launches for this product
- No other launches for this product.
Same idea, different domain
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