May 9, 2026
Lisp drama at 7ms
Show HN: I made a Clojure-like language in Go, boots in 7ms
Tiny new coding language drops, and the comments instantly turn into a speed-flex showdown
TLDR: A developer unveiled a tiny, fast-starting coding language that runs as one small app and even works in the browser. Commenters split between being impressed, joking that the speed brag was overhyped, and dragging rival projects into the spotlight.
A developer rolled into Show HN with a bold little brag: a new Clojure-like language built in Go that starts in about 7 milliseconds, ships as a single small app file, and can even turn programs into browser pages. For regular humans: it’s a way to write in a Lisp-style language without dragging around a huge software setup. And yes, the creator absolutely knew the headline would summon the performance nerds.
The comments did not disappoint. One of the first reactions was basically, "Cute, but the operating system starts stuff fast too", with dmitrygr joking about how quickly basic system libraries load. That instantly set the tone: admiration mixed with that classic internet need to say, "Actually…" Meanwhile, fans of this style of programming were thrilled. bjconlan called it the kind of project they’d always wanted, praising the appeal of a "big beautiful binary" — which is programmer poetry for “I love one neat file that just runs.”
Then came the mini-turf war: wait, doesn’t Glojure already exist? Multiple commenters jumped in to name-drop rival-ish projects like Glojure and Gloat’s browser REPL, turning the thread into less of a launch party and more of a family reunion with passive-aggressive cousins. And naturally, someone dropped the most 2020s insult possible: "obviously vibecoded." So the vibe was clear: part hype, part nerdy skepticism, part open-source crossover episode — and very, very online.
Key Points
- •let-go is a Clojure-like language in Go with a bytecode compiler and VM, distributed as a roughly 10MB binary with about 6–7ms cold start.
- •The project can compile programs into standalone executables and into self-contained WASM HTML applications with xterm.js-based terminal emulation.
- •let-go includes broad Clojure-style functionality such as macros, destructuring, protocols, records, multimethods, transducers, lazy sequences, persistent data structures, BigInts, and core.async.
- •The runtime includes built-in libraries and namespaces for HTTP, JSON, Transit, IO, Babashka pods, nREPL, OS access, and Linux syscalls.
- •The article reports 4,696 of 4,921 assertions passing in jank-lang/clojure-test-suite, equal to 95.4% across 217 test files, with remaining gaps mainly in numeric edge cases and stub namespaces.