Turicum is a modern programming language designed for expressiveness, safety, and concurrency. It combines functional and object-oriented paradigms in a clean and coherent syntax. The preprocessing capability and the dynamic nature of the language make it outstanding from a programming perspective.
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Fuctional
Functions, closures, and macros are first-class citizens in Turicum, and any of them can be used as a value. Every command has a value, and thus any command can be part of an expression, and an expression is also a command.
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Object-Oriented
Programs can define classes, methods in classes, multiple inheritance, and objects that inherit properties.
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Dynamic
Everything is defined during run-time and can be changed during run-time. For example, a class of function is defined when the definition is executed and lives in the defining scope. Methods are fields with closure or function values and can be added to any class or object even after the creation.
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Flexible
The interpreter can execute already loaded code at any time passing the remaining of the lexical tokens to a preprocessor. The preprocessor can be a function or closure written in Turicum, It can modify the lexical stream introducing arbitrary syntactical extensions to the language.
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Multithread
The interpreter uses Java 21 and supports (planned) VirtualThreads using native language constructs.
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Typed and scoped
Variables can be typed and assignment types are dynamically checked.
Turicum is both a scripting language and an embeddable engine. It can be run as a standalone command-line tool or integrated into Java or Kotlin applications as a library.
Turicum is implemented in Java and designed to be approachable by JVM developers while introducing powerful abstractions.
The name “Turicum” is the ancient Roman name for the city of Zürich, Switzerland, where the language is being developed.
Turicum was designed with the following principles:
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Concise syntax that remains readable and expressive.
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Functional-first execution model with support for side effects when needed.
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Multithreading and pipeline support built into the language.
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Safe scoping and closures, including reclosable closures which adapt to new context bindings. Closure eclosing is a unique language feature.
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Macro metaprogramming, allowing deferred and explicit evaluation of arguments.
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A flexible parameter system, supporting
normal, positional-only, named-only, argument and special parameters for rest, meta, and trailing callable parameters.
The language is designed for experienced developers, particularly those who work with the JVM and need a powerful scripting or DSL tool that feels natural but scales to complex architectural needs.
For further information read the reference documentation.