History of Thorn

Project History

Thorn began as a personal experiment: what would a programming language look like if it were designed to be genuinely pleasant to write in, rather than designed by committee? The earliest versions were rough drafts, iterating rapidly on syntax and semantics.


Early Development

The first drafts of Thorn explored what it meant for a language to be readable. Keywords like task, send, loop, and risk emerged early as core syntax decisions. The goal was always for code to read close to plain English.

The decision to compile via Ground and then SPINE-64 came from practicality: Thorn compiles to a language called Ground, which compiles to SPINE-64, an x86-64 assembly language.

Version Timeline

  • v0.1 — Initial spec draft. Core syntax established.
  • v0.2 — Sections introduced. Error handling redesigned with risk.
  • v0.3 — Current draft. Concurrency via spawn, full standard library draft, .force modifier.

Full Changelog

What's Next

The 0.3 spec is being stabilised. The next milestone is a working compiler and a public release of the toolchain. Community feedback on the spec is welcome via the forum and GitHub.

Read the Current Spec

GitHub