Most simply, jank is a Clojure dialect on LLVM with C++ interop. Less simply, jank is a general-purpose programming language which embraces the interactive, functional, value-oriented nature of Clojure and the desire for the native runtime and performance of C++. jank aims to be strongly compatible with Clojure. While Clojure's default host is the JVM and its interop is with Java, jank's host is LLVM and its interop is with C++.
For the current progress of jank and its usability, see the tables here: https://jank-lang.org/progress/
The current tl;dr for jank's usability is: still getting there, but not ready for use yet.
There are pre-compiled binaries for Ubuntu 24.04, which are built to follow the
main branch. You can download a tarball with everything you need here: https://github.com/jank-lang/jank/releases/tag/latest
; Comments begin with a ;
(println "meow") ; => nil
; All built-in data structures are persistent and immutable.
(def george {:name "George Clooney"}) ; => #'user/george
; Though all data is immutable by default, side effects are adhoc.
(defn say-hi [who]
(println (str "Hi " (:name who) "!"))
(assoc who :greeted? true))
; Doesn't change george.
(say-hi george) ; => {:name "George Clooney"
; :greeted? true}
; Many core functions for working with immutable data.
(apply + (distinct [12 8 12 16 8 6])) ; => 42
; Interop with C++ can happen through inline C++.
(defn sleep [ms]
(let [ms (int ms)]
; A special ~{ } syntax can be used from inline C++ to interpolate
; back into jank code.
(native/raw "auto const duration(std::chrono::milliseconds(~{ ms }->data));
std::this_thread::sleep_for(duration);")))If you'd like your name, company, or logo here, you can sponsor this project for at least $25/m.
