(This is a technical in-depth look, go here for easy to grasp features, or check out the tutorials section for easy introductions and overviews).
Horse64 is on the technical side a dynamically but strongly typed, object-oriented and imperative, bytecode executed, partially ahead-of-time compiled (with horsec) language.
Check the formal grammar of Horse64.
Check the data types, includes Garbage Collection and runtime performance behavior.
Check below for object-oriented programming in Horse64.
Check the formal concurrency rules here, or read an introduction on concurrency.
Check also the various concepts making up Horse64 beyond just the core specifications.
Major design goals of Horse64 are:
Approachability and productivity for beginners, without sacrificing big project suitability.
Clean and minimal, as much as possible without sacrificing big project suitability.
Base tooling and resulting programs should be portable, and easy to install and expand.
(This is why the compiler is custom and self-hosted, without LLVM or bison or other similar external tooling.)
Desktop app and server app creation should be easy.
For a more practical list of recommended uses, go here.
typeThe type keyword allows declaring the use of a so-called custom type. A custom type can be used for object-oriented programming (OOP). Any object instance, or object in short, will have the attributes specified on the type, which can be variables or funcs.
A custom type can either be based on another one to form a subtype which inherits all attributes and can add more. See here for a friendly introduction to base types. Or it can be extended by another module to add more shared attributes to all its instances.
The following rules apply to custom types:
typename(...) on any custom type object returns "object".
For any type with a base type, you can override any func attributes of the base type by just declaring them again on your new type. However, you can never override var attributes.
Using base.some_func() will call the overridden func attribute in your overriding function. If multiple base types had that function, it will call the one first in your base type list.
If any attribute name begins with an underscore, it can only be accessed from inside any func attribute via self, not from the outside.
If any var attribute is declared using protect, it can be accessed read-only from the outside but it can only be changed inside the type's func attributes.