tech
4. Software
The software provided by The Compiler Company is a powerful but opinionated programming environment. It consists of a GNU/Linux kernel, some vendored programs and libraries, and a suite of custom software.
The software is modular by design. You can pick and choose which components to embed in your own projects and you are encouraged to modify any part of the system to meet your goals.
In general, our software is designed for:
- early adoption
- integrate research, protocols, libraries, and hardware features from leading research orgs faster than anyone else
- rapid development
- interaction, code introspection, tooling, and automation built for prototyping at massive scale
- power
- using our environment should feel like cheating - macros, DSLs, and unmatched hackability
4.1. Langs
The Compiler Company is above all, a Lisp Company. The most
powerful software requires the most powerful code.
Lisp isn't enough though. Rust is our imperative language of choice
at the time of writing and generally suited for system-level software
components.
We make use of the Steel Bank Common Lisp compiler (SBCL) and the nightly Rust compiler toolchain.
4.2. OS
The Compiler Company is a Linux Company. There may be minimal
support for Darwin-based systems, but Microsoft Windows systems will
never be officially supported.
One of the anti-goals of our software is portability. For all of
the features we optimize for, portability becomes a burden, especially
with closed-source OS kernels. We are also explicitly driven to reduce
consumer dependence on these closed-source systems, especially in a
distributed network. They are simply unfit for use with the software
we produce and the systems we build.