The Terbium Programming Language

Welcome to the official Terbium guide! This guide is designed to introduce and guide you through writing code in the Terbium programming language.

Why use Terbium?

Terbium is a "high-level language that doesn't compromise in performance". It enables developers to write robust code that runs at native performance speeds, while still being easy and quick to write, read, and maintain.

Terbium is designed to be:

• Concise. Write less code wherever possible. High-level constructs and language features make Terbium elegant to write.
• Readable. Being explicit and unambiguous in the code where needed while still being concise.
• Simple. Complexity is abstracted away from the developer when writing a Terbium program, but low-level features are still accessable whenever needed.
• Performant. With LLVM, Terbium can compile to optimized native machine code, so your high-level code won't compromise runtime performance.
• Robust. Write error-free code with Terbium. Null is a concept that does not exist in Terbium, and all errors must explicitly be handled. Mutability is explicit and memory is automatically freed.
• Rapid. Rapid-prototyping and developer experience is just as important as runtime performance. A debug mode compiles semi-optimized code that compiles fast and suppresses pedantic errors as warnings.
• Typed. A comprehensive type system allows Terbium to infer the types of most values and functions at compile-time. If a type cannot be inferred, it must be explicitly specified.

Why does Terbium exist?

Terbium was created to solve a problem without the trade-offs of other languages.

If you wanted to write a program that runs fast, you would probably write it in a low-level language like C or C++. However, these languages fail to be robust. They are prone to memory leaks, null pointer exceptions, and other runtime errors. They are also verbose and difficult to read and write.

The Terbium compiler is made with Rust, which can run just as fast as C or C++, but is much more robust. However, Rust introduces unique concepts such as borrow-checking, lifetimes, smart pointers, along with a strict compiler, which can give it a steep learning curve and slow down development. Many also complain of Rust's slow compile-time.

If you wanted to write a program fast (write/develop fast, not run fast), a language with a more lenient compiler/runtime like Python would be a good choice. But these languages tend to be slow and easily introduce errors and bugs at runtime.

Terbium is designed to be a language that is the best of all of these worlds. It is designed to be as fast as C or Rust, as reliable and robust as Rust, and as flexible, easy, and quick to learn and write as Python.

What is this guide?

This document is designed to be a comprehensive guide to the Terbium language. Although not completely a step-by-step tutorial, it is designed to be a comprehensive reference to the language, walking through Terbium's features and providing examples and explanations for each.