Where to go next

That is the language. Twelve chapters covered every construct Luce has: there is no chapter thirteen holding back generics or traits or async, because those are not in it.

What you have seen#

Scalars and structs that copy; four heap objects that do not. Static types with inference and no implicit conversions anywhere. Checked arithmetic and bounds checks that no build mode turns off. Scope ownership with give, copy and free. T? for absence with narrowing and else. T! for failure with try, catch and error. A file as a module and a reserved std. namespace. Effects as host services, gated at compile time.

What you have not#

There are no first-class functions or closures, no generics for user code, no enums or tagged unions or match, no user-defined methods or receivers, no operator overloading, no exceptions, no shadowing, no mutable file-scope var, and no defer. Some of those are permanent decisions with reasons written down; some are simply not built. The status page says which is which, and it does not round up.

Four directions#

Read short programs. Luce by example is complete programs one concept at a time, each compiled and run to produce the output shown — plus the real userland from the repository, including a Brainfuck interpreter and a recursive-descent calculator.

Go deeper on the unusual parts. The guides are the longer pieces: why memory works this way and what it measured, the one rule that decides trap-or-error, what strings cost, what the benchmark table does and does not say, and how the toolchain fits together.

Look something up. The reference is normative and terse: the exact grammar, every operator's precedence, all 43 ownership situations with individual anchors, every trap code, every builtin signature. It is the document to cite.

Read the library. The standard library is three modules — math, strings, files — written in ordinary Luce and embedded in the compiler.

Writing something real#

build/loom luce program.luc

is the whole loop while you are working. When it is finished:

build/luce build program.luc --emit=exe -o program
./program

writes a standalone native binary that needs neither loom nor a runtime library beside it, and runs at the speed the benchmarks report.