solid

A robust programming language.

Read the [documentation] (link pending) on what Solid is and what it can do. To start coding in Solid, follow the guide below.

Code in Solid

The first step is to make sure you have node and npm installed. Go to https://nodejs.org/en/ and download the LTS (“Recommended For Most Users”) version. This will install both tools.

Since this project is still in pre-release, it’s not fully stable or published to a registry yet. Until it reaches v1.0.0, you’ll need to obtain its source code from GitHub and build it yourself. If you don’t already have git installed, (run git --version in your command line to check), you can download it from https://git-scm.com/.

After installing the requisites, run the following commands in your command line:

$ git clone https://github.com/chharvey/solid.git
$ cd ./solid/
$ npm ci && npm run build

To be sure it installed correctly, run this command to see the current version of solid:

$ npx solid --version # you should see:
> solid version 0.2.0

Run npx solid --help for the full suite of CLI commands.

Now you’re ready to start coding! For this demo, we’ll write a simple calculation of only numbers and operators. Open a new text file and enter the following source code:

1 + +2 ^ (5 - 3) * -4;

Then save the file under ./sample/my-program.solid within the project directory.

Once you save your source code, you can compile and execute it from the command line. Make sure your current working directory is the ./solid/ project directory as shown above (for now, you’ll need to be in this directory to run the compiler), and then run the following commands:

$ npx solid c ./sample/my-program.solid
$ npx solid r ./sample/my-program.wasm

The first line compiles your source code into an executable binary format, and the second line runs that executable. For a full description of what the solid command-line interface can do, run npx solid --help.

That’s it! You should see [-15] in the output, which is the result of evaluating the expression. Play around with the expression to change its value.

This demo was a simple calculator, but Solid can do much more. You can explore all the current features in the Reference Manual. Of course, the plan is for it to become a fully-functional programming language. You can follow its progression on GitHub for details.