Tomo: A statically typed, imperative language that cross-compiles to C [video]

A new language called Tomo just hit the scene with a bold promise: write in Tomo, and it turns into C—the old-school powerhouse—while adding automatic memory cleanup and a “fast, simple, safe” vibe. The video pitch is calm; the comments are not. One early bird dropped the GitHub repo for the curious, and supporters quickly chimed in with “well thought” praise and love for quality-of-life touches like auto command‑line parsing.

Then the skeptics showed up with the fireworks. The top gripe: Tomo skips “generics” and “polymorphism” (think: reusable, one-size-fits-all code), which one commenter called a straight-up DOA (dead on arrival) move. Another hot button? It uses a garbage collector—automatic memory cleanup—so critics say it’s leaning more “high-level comfort” than “bare-metal C grit.” Cue the classic Internet face-off: “C with pillows” vs “Who needs pillows anyway?”

Meanwhile, language historians in the chat pointed out Nim already plays in this “compiles to C” arena, sparking jokes about inventing a Pokédex for programming languages. But a thoughtful voice reframed Tomo as a test bed: not trying to conquer the world, just hoping its best ideas get “borrowed/steal/copy” by bigger languages. Verdict from the crowd: intriguing concept, spicy trade-offs, and a comment section doing what it does best—fight club, but nerdier.