more goals

1 files changed, 40 insertions, 12 deletions

diff --git a/doc/goals.txt b/doc/goals.txt
index 620438c..5ce3473 100644
--- a/doc/goals.txt
+++ b/doc/goals.txt
@@ -1,4 +1,13 @@
-a loose collection of goals and ideas for this as-yet-unnamed language
+a loose collection of goals and ideas for this as-yet-unnamed language.  the
+main goal is really just (a) to have fun, and (b) to make a c replacement that
+provides the things i personally wish the language was better on.
+
+* very small, self-contained executables
+  + hello world should ideally be on the order of a couple kilobytes
+  + only functions which get referenced from main (and so on recursively)
+    get any code generated, even for the stdlib
+  + favor size over performance where reasonable
+  + effectively no language runtime
 
 * fast compilation
   + grammar must be very easy to parse
@@ -8,12 +17,6 @@ a loose collection of goals and ideas for this as-yet-unnamed language
   + in general:
     - the most important thing for coding to be fun is a tight feedback loop
 
-* very small, self-contained executables
-  + hello world should ideally be on the order of a couple kilobytes
-  + only functions which get referenced from main (and so on recursively)
-    get any code generated, even for the stdlib
-  + favor size over performance where reasonable
-
 * explicit
   + procedures that allocate should have an arena parameter
   + no operator overloading, but builtin vector/matrix types (eventually)
@@ -41,22 +44,47 @@ a loose collection of goals and ideas for this as-yet-unnamed language
     - let x = y
     - can do like .ENUM_NAME when expecting an enum value, even though
       otherwise it's `let x = EnumType.ENUM_NAME`
+  + pascal-style postfix dereference, no need for a->b or (*a).b
+    - possibly also auto-dereference when accessing fields
 
 * c interop
+  + c type aliases in stdlib
+  + can turn off name mangling on exported identifiers
   + ability to specify different calling conventions on:
     - functions imported from outside
     - functions exported
 
-* types and procedures in any order
-  + this goal can be thrown out if it turns out to slow down the compiler
-    - but finding these first allows to hand all procedures to a thread pool
-      for parsing and optimization
-  + removes the need for function prototypes, opaque structs, etc.
+* better module system than c
+  + proper module import, no header files
+  + types and procedures in any order
+    - can be thrown out if it turns out to slow down the compiler, but
+      finding these first allows to hand all procedures to a thread pool for
+      parsing and optimization
+    - removes the need for function prototypes, opaque structs, etc.
   + like in odin, all files in a directory are compiled together and have
     the same toplevel scope; to isolate things in a package, put them in
     a different directory
+  + no A::B like in c++ or rust, just a normal A.B
 
 * portable
   + should be as easy as possible (like that's saying much...) to port to new platforms
   + at minimum support amd64 and wasm
+    - try and make it work with windows
   + consider having a version of the compiler which uses LLVM for release builds
+
+* useful
+  + not just a toy language!
+  + begin dogfooding with it as soon as that's viable
+  + write a text editor, develop the compiler with that
+  + eventually bootstrap into a self-hosting one, maybe
+  + utility procedures in the standard library
+    - string manipulation: searching, splitting, comparing, etc.
+    - utf8 encoding & decoding
+    - libc bindings
+    - command-line argument parsing
+    - consistent allocator interface
+    - arena allocators
+    - memory context allocator (like c# autorelease pool)
+    - file i/o, can read whole thing into string easily
+  + try to get _reasonable_ levels of optimization, within the constraints of
+    simplicity and very fast compilation