Latitude is a work-in-progress prototype-oriented programming language that sports a dynamic type system, a reflexive runtime with plenty of metaprogramming opportunities, and first-class scoping objects.

Note: For installation instructions, a "Getting Started" guide, and the standard library documentation, refer to the documentation page.

• Simple syntax borrowing from Ruby, Smalltalk, and Erlang
• Object orientation through prototypes
• First-class scopes
• Automatic garbage collection
• Full continuation support via callCC
• Ruby-style exception handling via catch blocks
• Support for lazy evaluation
• Arbitrary precision arithmetic support

From Wikipedia:

Prototype-based programming is a style of object-oriented programming in which behaviour reuse (known as inheritance) is performed via a process of cloning existing objects that serve as prototypes.

In a class-based language, the programmer writes classes and then constructs objects which belong to those classes. In contract, a prototype-oriented language provides only objects, not classes. The programmer writes objects and then constructs additional objects which behave like the originals. This eliminates a dichotomy between classes and objects and allows for greater flexibility in programming.

For example, suppose you wanted to have a random number generator. Since Latitude has no notion of static classes, you might write a singleton object to contain the random number functionality. Later on, if you decide that you want to have multiple random number generators (for thread safety, perhaps), it is trivial to convert this singleton object into a "class-like" object, from which other objects can be made.

Several runnable code examples are available in the repository /latitude-examples.

Latitude requires a C++14 compiler (tested with GCC 5.3.0), the Boost C++ libraries, Perl, and GNU Flex/Bison. Details on installation can be found at Installation.

There is an Emacs mode for Latitude in misc/latitude-mode.el which should work out-of-the-box and will highlight Latitude syntax. Improvements will be on the way to the Emacs mode in the future.

Latitude is copyrighted software belonging to Silvio Mayolo (Mercerenies). See LICENSE.txt for licensing information.