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Introduction
Welcome to this short book on the basics of FZLang, and thank you for giving this programming language a try.
First, let's talk about what FZLang is and how this book is organized.
What is FZLang?
FZLang is a programming language with its own toolchain, which includes a compiler and a virtual machine. The compiler checks and compiles source code into a portable file, and the virtual machine runs programs written in FZLang.
This project originally began as a way to learn about building compilers. I (Samsonium) wanted to explore a few questions:
- Why is there a meaningful difference between a compiler and an interpreter?
- How does a program called a compiler understand what I want it to do?
- How does execution of a compiled program work? And how does the process of translating from human-readable code to machine instructions happen?
I've been programming for more than ten years, but had never taken the time to find out!
So this project became a place to experiment and learn more about the foundations of the tools programmers use every day. Along the way, the language began to take shape and develop a philosophy of its own.
Today, I would describe that philosophy as: “Be as convenient as a tool, while always trying to remain predictable.” I imagine every language community wants something similar for its language, but this principle has helped me make choices at important points in the project's development.
How FZLang handles memory
The question first came up when I introduced stacks to the virtual machine: “A garbage collector, or something else?” Learning how garbage collection works would certainly have been interesting. However, having chosen Java as my first language, I was familiar with its “weight” and runtime behavior. Of course, its garbage collector deserves some of the credit for that.
So instead of a GC, I decided to explore RAII. This led to a simple model for how objects move through a program: when an object is passed as an argument, it is “borrowed” into a nested environment; when returned, it is moved into the parent environment. This approach avoids a GC and, most importantly, gives objects a deterministic lifetime—and therefore more predictable memory use, as far as possible.
In short, FZLang uses scope-based RAII.
Next: Getting started