Building Hew

An engineering journal documenting the development of the Hew programming language — from specification to two working compilers.

Apr 6, 2026 · 7 min read

Releasing v0.3.0 — Structural Bounds, In-Process REPL, and Stdlib Depth

Structural trait bounds now work without explicit impl declarations. Plus an in-process REPL, Rc<T>, typed network errors, SMTP one-shot helpers, and a large stdlib surface expansion.

Mar 29, 2026 · 5 min read

Releasing v0.2.2 — Observer Discovery, Reply Channel Fix, WebSocket Server

hew-observe auto-discovers running programs over unix sockets. Plus a codegen fix that eliminated a class of actor crashes, and WebSocket server support in the stdlib.

Mar 23, 2026 · 4 min read

Releasing v0.2.1 — One Binary, Hardened Runtime

hew-codegen is gone: the compiler is a single binary now. Plus a major runtime hardening pass, generic channels, and 562 E2E tests.

Topics

Case Study (4) Compiler (8) Infrastructure (4) Language Design (7) Release (15) Runtime (6) Tooling (5)

Series

Building Hew

16 parts

Hew started with a 394-line specification, a 1,076-line gap analysis, and four research documents — before any compiler code existed.

MicroGPT

3 parts

I needed a real program to stress-test the compiler. A 120-line GPT turned into 1,092 lines of Hew, and a third of those lines were working around compiler bugs.

All Posts

April 2026

Apr 6 Releasing v0.3.0 — Structural Bounds, In-Process REPL, and Stdlib Depth release 7 min read

March 2026

Mar 29 Releasing v0.2.2 — Observer Discovery, Reply Channel Fix, WebSocket Server release 5 min read Mar 23 Releasing v0.2.1 — One Binary, Hardened Runtime release 4 min read Mar 12 Releasing v0.2.0 — Named Receivers and Generic impl Blocks release 3 min read Mar 12 Teaching an LLM a Language It Has Never Seen tooling case-study 10 min read Mar 10 MicroGPT — From 1,092 Lines to 677 case-study 5 min read Mar 9 What MicroGPT Found — 13 Bugs and 340 Lines of Workarounds case-study compiler 6 min read Mar 8 Porting Karpathy's MicroGPT to Hew case-study 7 min read Mar 7 Releasing v0.1.9 — FreeBSD Support release 2 min read Mar 7 Wire Types and Distributed Actors runtime 11 min read Mar 6 Releasing v0.1.8 — Literal Coercion, Indirect Enums, and LLVM 22 release 2 min read Mar 5 LSP, Tree-Sitter, and Editor Support tooling 7 min read Mar 4 Releasing v0.1.7 — Debugging and Collection Ergonomics release 2 min read Mar 3 Releasing v0.1.6 — State Machines, Wire System, and a Lot of Cleanup release 2 min read Mar 3 State Machines and Duration Literals language-design runtime 6 min read Mar 2 The Package Manager and Ecosystem Libraries tooling 7 min read Mar 1 Building the Website and the Playground infrastructure 5 min read

February 2026

Feb 27 Releasing v0.1.5 — Static Linking and Benchmarks release 2 min read Feb 27 Type System Improvements After the Initial Release compiler 5 min read Feb 26 Releasing v0.1.4 — False Warnings, Over-Engineering, and Windows release 2 min read Feb 25 Releasing v0.1.3 — Packaging and Signing Fixes release 2 min read Feb 25 Releasing v0.1.2 — Build System Fixes release 2 min read Feb 25 Tagging v0.1.0 and Building the Release Pipeline release infrastructure 5 min read Feb 24 Releasing v0.1.1 — Codegen Fixes and FFI Linking release 2 min read Feb 23 Releasing v0.1.0 — Initial Public Release release 2 min read Feb 21 Fixing Generics and Adding Verification compiler 6 min read Feb 20 Pre-Alpha Syntax Cleanup language-design 7 min read Feb 19 Running Valgrind on Everything runtime 6 min read Feb 19 Closing the Gaps compiler runtime 5 min read Feb 19 Replacing FlatBuffers with MessagePack compiler tooling 6 min read Feb 17 Grammar Tooling and the MLIR Dialect Overhaul tooling infrastructure 4 min read Feb 15 Testing the Language on Myself language-design compiler 5 min read Feb 15 Generators and Actor Mailboxes language-design runtime 6 min read Feb 15 Removing Six Syntax Redundancies language-design 5 min read Feb 15 How Fast Is It, Actually infrastructure 3 min read Feb 14 Throwing Away the First Compiler compiler 6 min read Feb 14 Three Spec Revisions in Three Days language-design 5 min read Feb 13 Building the Actor Runtime runtime 7 min read Feb 12 From cargo init to a Running Compiler compiler 6 min read Feb 12 Writing a Spec Before Writing Code language-design 5 min read