I built a programming language from raw assembly — and it beats C by 6.6 on LZ77

Source: Dev.to

The numbers that made me double‑check

I ran a six‑language benchmark suite (C, Rust, Go, Jda, Python, Ruby) on real algorithms — not micro‑benchmarks.

• Sudoku (500 puzzles): C 62 ms, Rust 62 ms, Go 66 ms, Jda 41 ms
• LZ77 (1 MB compress): C 1,830 ms, Rust 2,185 ms, Go 2,721 ms, Jda 277 ms

That’s 1.5× faster than C on Sudoku and 6.6× faster than C on LZ77. The Jda binary ran under Rosetta 2 (x86‑64 emulated) while the C/Rust/Go binaries were native ARM64.

How?
Source‑level optimizations the C compiler can’t easily do: MOD→AND strength reduction, hash‑chain hoisting, aggressive dead‑code elimination.

Compile times

Compilation is dramatically faster:

• 33× faster than Rust
• 16× faster than Go

Skipping LLVM saves a lot of time.

A taste of the syntax

fn search_file(path: &i8, pattern: &i8) -> i64 {
    // …
}

A real ripgrep‑style search tool (~400 lines total) compiles to a 1 MB static binary with zero dependencies.

What’s in the box

• Self‑hosted compiler — byte‑identical fixed point reached April 2026
• 117 standard‑library packages — HTTP, JSON, crypto, tensors, neural networks
• Built‑in concurrency — goroutine‑style green threads, no GC
• 388 conformance tests passing
• Native installers for Windows, macOS, Linux

Try it

Repository:

Feel free to ask questions about the bootstrap process, the code generation, or why I undertook this project.