Carbon (programming language) - Wikipedia

Carbon is an experimental programming language designed for connectiveness with C++.² The project is open-source and was started at Google. Google engineer Chandler Carruth first introduced Carbon at the CppNorth conference in Toronto in July 2022. He stated that Carbon was created to be a C++ successor.^{3 1} The language is expected to have an experimental MVP version 0.1 in 2025 and a production-ready version 1.0 after 2027.⁴

The language intends to fix several perceived shortcomings of C++ ⁵ but otherwise provides a similar feature set. The main goals of the language are readability and “bi-directional interoperability” (which allows the user to include C++ code in the Carbon file), as opposed to using a new language like Rust, that, whilst being influenced by C++, is not two-way compatible with C++ programs. Changes to the language will be decided by the Carbon leads.^{6 7 8 9}

Carbon’s documents, design, implementation, and related tools are hosted on GitHub under the Apache-2.0 license with LLVM Exceptions.¹⁰

Example

The following shows how a program might be written in Carbon and C++:¹¹

Carbon

C++

package Geometry; import Math; class Circle { var r: f32; } fn PrintTotalArea(circles: Slice(Circle)) { var area: f32 = 0; for (c: Circle in circles) { area += Math.Pi * c.r * c.r; } Print("Total area: {0}", area); } fn Main() -> i32 { // A dynamically sized array, like \`std::vector\`. var circles: Array(Circle) = ({.r = 1.0}, {.r = 2.0}); // Implicitly converts \`Array\` to \`Slice\`. PrintTotalArea(circles); return 0; }

import std; struct Circle { std::float32_t r; }; void PrintTotalArea(std::span<Circle> circles) { std::float32_t area = 0; for (const Circle& c : circles) { area += std::numbers::pi * c.r * c.r; } std::print("Total area: {}\n", area); } int main() { std::vector<Circle> circles{{.r = 1.0}, {.r = 2.0}}; // Implicitly converts \`vector\` to \`span\`. PrintTotalArea(circles); return 0; }

See also

• Comparison of programming languages
• Timeline of programming languages
• C++
• D
• Go
• Rust
• Ring
• Mojo
• V

References

External links

• Carbon-language on GitHub

• Carbon at the Compiler Explorer (godbolt)

1. “Carbon Language: An experimental successor to C++ - Chandler Carruth - CppNorth 2022”. CppNorth. 22 July 2022 – via YouTube.↩
2. “README”. Retrieved 6 September 2023. It is designed around interoperability with C++ as well as large-scale adoption and migration for existing C++ codebases and developers.↩
3. “Scheduled events for Tuesday, July 19, 09:00 - 10:30”. CppNorth, The Canadian C++ Conference, July 17–20, 2022. CppNorth. Retrieved 21 July 2022 – via Sched.com.↩
4. Carbon Language: Roadmap, carbon-language, 11 January 2024, retrieved 18 January 2024 ↩
5. “Difficulties improving C++”. carbon-language/carbon-lang repo. Google. 21 July 2022 – via GitHub.↩
6. Carruth, Chandler; Ross-Perkins, Jon; Riley, Matthew; Hummert, Sidney (23 July 2022). “Evolution and governance”. carbon-language/carbon-lang repo. Google – via GitHub.↩
7. Illidge, Myles (21 July 2022). “Google’s Carbon programming language aims to replace C++“. MyBroadband.↩
8. Jackson, Joab (20 July 2022). “Google Launches Carbon, an Experimental Replacement for C++“. The New Stack.↩
9. Mustafa, Onsa (20 July 2022). “Carbon, A New Programming Language from Google As A C++ Successor”. PhoneWorld.↩
10. “carbon-lang/LICENSE”. GitHub. 16 June 2020. Retrieved 24 July 2022.↩
11. “carbon-lang/docs/images/snippets.md at trunk · carbon-language/carbon-lang”. GitHub. Retrieved 16 December 2023.↩