The Q Programming Language

Note

q is under heavy development and not ready for production yet.

Feel free to get in touch if you are interested in helping out.

Features

• High performance (ssa and asm optimizations)
• Tiny executables ("Hello World" is ~500 bytes)
• Fast compilation (5-10x faster than most)
• Unix scripting (JIT compilation)
• No dependencies (no llvm, no libc)

Installation

git clone https://git.urbach.dev/cli/q
cd q
go build

Usage

Quick test:

q run examples/hello

Build an executable:

q build examples/hello

Cross-compile for another OS:

q build examples/hello --os windows

Unix scripts

The compiler is actually so fast that it's possible to use q for scripting. Create a new file:

#!/usr/bin/env q

import io

main() {
	io.write("Hello\n")
}

Add permissions via chmod +x. The file can be executed from anywhere now. The machine code is run directly from memory if the OS supports it.

Tests

go run gotest.tools/gotestsum@latest

Platforms

	arm64	x86-64
Linux	✔️	✔️
Mac	✔️*	✔️
Windows	✔️*	✔️

Those marked with a star are supported in theory but there are no developer machines to test them.

Security

PIE

All executables are built as Position Independent Executables (PIE) supporting a dynamic base address.

Memory pages

Code and data are separated into different memory pages and loaded with different access permissions.

	Read	Execute	Write
Code	✔️	✔️	❌
Data	✔️	❌	❌

License

Please see the license documentation.

Copyright

© 2025 Eduard Urbach