25 lines
1.7 KiB
Markdown
25 lines
1.7 KiB
Markdown
# Language philosophy
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FZLang has two guiding goals: “be convenient as a tool, while always trying to remain predictable.”
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Here are some of the ways the language tries to follow that philosophy.
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## Memory and resources
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In environments with a garbage collector (GC), programmers don't know exactly when the collector will run. An object may remain in memory for seconds after a method has finished. And when cleanup does happen, the runtime may pause briefly—something that can matter in audio, games, networking, or embedded systems.
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FZLang uses scope-based RAII, a model in which memory use is deterministic. Every object belongs to a scope, and when that scope is destroyed, the object is destroyed with it. This makes response times more consistent and predictable.
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Scope-based RAII also helps manage resources such as sockets and files. Resource cleanup follows the same clear rule: when a scope ends, everything attached to it is cleaned up.
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Finally, scope-based RAII avoids the runtime overhead of a full garbage collector. A GC needs mechanisms such as memory maps, background threads, and read and write barriers. FZLang's virtual machine is small, and memory is released as instructions are processed.
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## Syntax
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FZLang deliberately keeps some parts of its syntax explicit. For example, methods of a class instance must use `this`, and declarations require types. These are strict parts of the language.
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On the other hand, a function declaration can omit a return type when it doesn't return a value; writing `void` every time would be unnecessary.
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In this way, FZLang aims to balance syntax that keeps behavior predictable with simplifications that are genuinely useful.
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