[0]: https://janet-lang.org/

    counter :: int

    for counter in <1, 10-counter> (
       print(counter)
       print(" ")
    )

    backfor counter in <1, 9> print(counter, " ")

Are you doing this at runtime (reference counting or similar), or have you found a way to make the static analysis tractable by restricting what aliasing patterns are allowed?

The 250kB size is impressive for a language with inheritance and N-dimensional arrays. For comparison, Lua's VM is around 200-300kB and doesn't include some of those features. What did you have to leave out to hit that size? I assume no JIT, but what about things like regex, IO libraries, etc?

Also - calling back into C functions from the script is a key feature for embeddability. How do you handle type marshalling between the script's type system and C's? Do you expose a C API where I register callbacks with type signatures, or is there reflection/dynamic typing on the boundary?

I've been working on one for Kotlin lately:

https://gitlab.com/codr7/shik

Beyond NNs, my use case to embed fast C calculations into the language to make scientific programming easier. But the inspiration was less about the use case and more about certain programming innovations which I’m sure are elsewhere but I’m not sure where — like aliases, callable function arguments, generalized inheritance, etc.

That’s a great list — most of those languages I’ve honestly never heard of..

How does it deal with use after free? How does it deal with data races?

Memory safety can't be solved by just eliminating pointer arithmetic, there's more stuff needed to achieve it