Three is intended for systems and low-level programming that would typically be done with C. When compared to C, Three's goals are:

• Closures
• Namespacing
• Reduced macro usage
• Standardization of conditional compilation
• Language-level constructs for atomic and transactional memory operations
• Explicit control over mutability and nullable pointers
• Standardized and simplified attributes
• Vector instructions
• Linkage and ABI controls
• API documentation notation
• Library+header packaging
• 95% native compatibility with existing C headers

Three is still in active development. You will encounter compiler bugs, including codegen problems. Please be careful using Three, and do report problems you find!

C is an awesome and unparalleled language. But, it can get a little messy at times, particularly when the preprocessor gets involved. Three is an attempt to do nearly everything C can do, but with a simpler, standard syntax.

Three uses a custom build system written with Rake. That means you need ruby, rake, and the ruby gem rake-compile. In addition to those, you also need a C++ compiler that supports C++11. Three depends on LLVM, so be ready for a rather lengthy install the first time through.

To build and install:

$ git clone git@github.com:mattmassicotte/three.git
$ cd three
$ brew install homebrew/versions/llvm35 --with-clang
$ gem install rake-compile
$ rake install

You are, of course, very welcome to contribute. Pull requests are great, but so are issues. Everything helps!

This project is intended to be a safe, welcoming space for collaboration, and contributors are expected to adhere to the Contributor Covenant code of conduct.

• @mattmassicotte
• @kb

The project is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.