December 27, 2025
Compiler any% speedrun IRL
Langjam-Gamejam Devlog: Making a language, compiler, VM and 5 games in 52 hours
One dev built a new language and 5 games in 52 hours — commenters call it a chaos speedrun
TLDR: One developer built a custom programming language, its tools, and five games in just 52 hours for a coding jam. Comments swung from awe to satire—stopwatch memes, jokes about building an entire OS next, and debates over switching to Linux while still using Microsoft’s tools—making it a viral spectacle.
Internet devs just watched one person speedrun a mini software empire: a brand‑new programming language, its compiler, a virtual machine, and five tiny games — all in 52 hours. The jam’s brief is “make a language and a game,” but this entrant cranked it to eleven, even porting a Norse knot puzzler from Rust. Fans cheered the audacity; skeptics squinted at the practicality.
The top vibe? Scope sprint mania. One commenter joked we’re five years from “make your own OS in 12 minutes” and people ran with it, posting imaginary stopwatches and “speedrun any% compiler” memes. Others side‑eyed the “I fled Windows for Linux… but still using Microsoft’s tools” plot twist, with gentle ribbing about principles vs pragmatism.
There’s real nerd romance, too: a simple, stack‑style language, tests to catch bugs, dreams of moving the virtual machine onto the graphics card. Non‑coders compared it to building a board game ruleset and the board, then inventing five games before the timer buzzes.
The thread split between “this is inspirational chaos energy” and “cool, but please sleep.” A link to the previous jam thread turned the comment section into a time capsule of ever‑escalating challenges. Verdict: ridiculous, impressive, and very, very online.
Key Points
- •The project builds a custom language, compiler, assembler, VM, and five games for Langjam Gamejam 2025 in 52 hours.
- •Architecture compiles a high-level language to IR, assembles to bytecode, and runs on a CPU VM, with a stretch goal for GPU compute shader execution.
- •Bytecode design is a stack-based FORTH-like with standard library call-outs and debug printing of IR and assembly.
- •Tooling choices include implementing in C++ with MSVC; prior work in Tentacode informs LLVM codegen and unit tests for test-driven development.
- •The language includes minimal features needed for games, such as variables, arrays, loops, console I/O, conditionals, math, RNG, functions, and string operations; SSBOs are planned for GPU-side state if needed.