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Oscar Spencer recently presented Grain, a new strongly-typed, high-level language that compiles to WebAssembly. Grain includes functional programming features (e.g., type inference, pattern matching, closures) while allowing mutable variables. Grain also has a standard library with composite data structures (Option, Stack, Result) and system calls (e.g., I/O, process handling).
In a talk at the WebAssembly Summit 2021, Spencer went through the main characteristics of Grain, a programming language that he said is made exclusively for WebAssembly, its only compile target.
The Grain language self-describes its mission as follows:
Grain aims to modernize innovative features from functional and academic programming languages and bring them to the masses. Many languages have had wonderful ideas, but they have ultimately been dismissed as esoteric or too difficult to learn and, consequently, have struggled to rally a large community around them. Grain hopes to bring new life to these ideas and present them in an accessible form that’s easy to use and understand.