Show HN: The Kio Programming Language

Developer jdevuyst released Kio 0.1, a statically typed, hosted programming language designed for ultra-portability that supports eight host languages, with more planned in the coming weeks. Kio is based on polymorphic lambda calculus with higher-kinded types, offers type-driven macros called elaborators, and can statically check asserted equivalences using a normalizer. The minimalist language omits built-in effectful functions and even built-in string or numeric types, requiring programs to declare needed capabilities that the host supplies; the author said the language was designed with AI, addressing the topic in a blog post.

Kio is a statically typed, hosted language that is designed to be ultra-portable. Kio 0.1 supports eight host languages and more will be added in the coming weeks. Kio is based on polymorphic lambda calculus with higher-kinded types. Kio has type-driven macros elaborators and it can statically check asserted equivalences using a normalizer. Kio is a minimalistic language. It doesn't have built-in effectful functions and it doesn't even have built-in string or numeric types. Instead programs declare the capabilities they need and the host supplies them. The language is designed with AI, which is bound to raise some eyebrows, so I blogged about that here: https://jdevuyst.github.io/kio/blog/2026-10-01-introducing-k... https://jdevuyst.github.io/kio/blog/2026-10-01-introducing-kio.html Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49920582 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49920582 Points: 1 Comments: 0