Ether

Ether is a research-grade, high-performance interpreted language implementation focused on language features for machine learning and AI-oriented programming. It provides a compact lexer, parser, compiler, and a small virtual machine (VM) for executing a bytecode-like instruction set. The repository currently contains a prototype interpreter/compiler written in Rust.

Authors

• Richard Ore
• Ether Language Foundation

Status

• Prototype / experimental.

Goals & Vision

• Build a fast, expressive language primarily aimed at AI researchers and systems programmers.
• Provide first-class tensor primitives and convenient high-level constructs (pattern matching, errors, ranges, concise syntax).
• Evolve into a complete toolchain: language spec -> compiler -> optimizer -> native backends.

Key Features (implemented / in-progress)

• Python/JS-like syntax
• Optional type inference
• Bytecode compiler and a small but fast VM
• Built-in operations for tensors and basic neural primitives (matmul, relu, softmax etc)
• Lists, maps, slicing, ranges, for-in loops, and match expressions etc

Quick start

1. Install Rust (rustup) if you don't already have it: https://rustup.rs

2. From the project root, build the pthe release binary:

   cargo build --release

Running as a library

• The crate exposes compile_and_run(source: &str) -> Result<(), String> which can be used from other Rust code. See src/main.rs for example usage.

Roadmap (high-level)

• Module & import system (allow code to be split across files; import keyword)
• Add CLI to run a file and REPL mode (currently main runs embedded examples)
• Classes with multiple inheritance and visibility rules (private members using leading _)
• Enumerations (enums) and improved pattern matching
• Improved type system and optional type-checker pass
• Improved AI primitives support
• Language level multi-model support
• Tests, CI, and packaging

Contributing

• Issues and PRs are welcome. For significant changes, open an issue to discuss the design first.
• Code style: use rustfmt (cargo fmt) and prefer idiomatic Rust.

License

• This project is released under the BSD 2-Clause "Simplified" License — see LICENSE.

Contact

• Ether Language Foundation