NInickmqb·Apr 8, 2019
In Show HN: Muon, a low-level programming language inspired by C, C# and Gonickmqb
muon
C2019–2020
nickmqb / muon
muon
Modern low-level programming language
4Distinct people
14Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
778GitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
Modern low-level programming language
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use has been verified yet.
What people are saying
No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.
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Also in these discussions
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This week on Hacker News
Nov 8–Nov 15 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/15/2026, 4:00:59 PM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by month14 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2019-04-07 18:00:10 UTC to 2020-07-15 21:55:12 UTC.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apr 2019 | 2019-04-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-05-01 00:00:00 UTC | 6 | 1 | 5 |
| May 2019 | 2019-05-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-06-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Jun 2019 | 2019-06-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-07-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jul 2019 | 2019-07-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-08-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Aug 2019 | 2019-08-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-09-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Sep 2019 | 2019-09-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-10-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Oct 2019 | 2019-10-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-11-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Nov 2019 | 2019-11-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-12-01 00:00:00 UTC | 4 | 0 | 4 |
| Dec 2019 | 2019-12-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jan 2020 | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-02-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Feb 2020 | 2020-02-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-03-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| Mar 2020 | 2020-03-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-04-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Apr 2020 | 2020-04-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-05-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| May 2020 | 2020-05-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-06-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jun 2020 | 2020-06-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-07-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jul 2020 | 2020-07-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-08-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
What Hacker News says
6 sourcesSibling comment (granzymes) is correct, also see implementation here: https://github.com/nickmqb/muon/blob/d557c18d2dcd3fc15a7a7a6...
In Muon, you can always add more functions to an existing namespace, so if you wanted to have a function with that behavior you could add it.
In Show HN: Muon, a low-level programming language inspired by C, C# and GoI'm not sure that I follow you, just to clarify:
Muon.ssize == Rust.isize == Go.int ('usually', according to https://tour.golang.org/basics/11)
Muon.usize == Rust.usize == Go.uint
Muon.long == Rust.i64 == Go.int64
This is a list of all core types in Muon: https://github.com/nickmqb/muon/blob/master/docs/muon_by_exa...
In Show HN: Muon, a low-level programming language inspired by C, C# and GoI have a criticism regarding how basic data types are named:
https://github.com/nickmqb/muon/blob/master/docs/muon_by_exa...
Type names like long, short, char (and the oh-so-dear long long) are ancient cruft which shouldn't be used in a new programming language. They are confusing (as in, the answer to question: how many bits are there in your int, long, short depends on both arch and compiler) and since 70s we discovered it the hard way that they're non-extensible (multiple times, actually!). Similar for the fate of char in the post-ASCII world. C still keeps them for backward compatibility, but types like uint32_t defined in stdint.h is becoming common practice for new code.
The choices are also not compatible with C or Go, adding further to the confusion (Muon's int is 32-bit and long is 64-bit on all archs!), so even for C/C++ and Go
Read the rest
programmers, the nostalgia turns into a pitfall. Having no familiarity with C# (not much of a Windows user since late-90s, and C# virtually doesn't exist for Linux/macOS people which Muon claims to be targeting), I looked it up, and it seems it's based on C#'s distorted and incompatible adoption of C89's data types.
Go applies the same custom to float/double as float32/float64 which makes it uniform. Go also defines int to be the size of the native integer register size on the target arch (which I like because this is what int supposed to mean originally, this was the common understanding when porting between C and assembly, although some may disagree after ~50 years of weird adaptations of it) which unifies uint and size_t, rendering size_t obsolete.
Ironically, Muon makes use of explicit number-of-bits suffix for one data type: bool32 (and there's no bool16 or bool64). I don't even know why one might have it as a basic language type.
I really hope he adopts a naming convention that is similar to C99's stdint.h or Go (which the author claims to be inspired by), or their shorter cousins u8, u16, ... used in Linux source code.
More interesting link, I think: https://github.com/nickmqb/muon/blob/master/docs/muon_by_exa...
Uniform call syntax and constructor functions go a long way in making usage more pleasant. I’m curious about “tagged pointers”, though: is the only way to make a “union” by taking the reference of a bunch of things? Seems somewhat inconvenient. Finally, there seem to be a couple of opinionated requirements in the language, namely significant whitespace (made “worse” because you’re already using brackets to define scope) and restricting generic parameters to single-letter names that seem like they’re a bit too restrictive.
In Show HN: Muon, a low-level programming language inspired by C, C# and GoShow HN: Muon, a low-level programming language inspired by C, C# and Go
175 points · Open discussion