Designed at Bell Labs by Sean Dorward, Rob Pike, and Phil Winterbottom in 1995, Limbo is a concurrent, procedural programming language for writing distributed systems.
Currently maintained by Vita Nuova Holdings, Limbo is the language used to write applications for the Inferno operating system, a distributed system that also had its start at Bell Labs.
Inferno is available as open-source software under the GNU General Public License, the GNU Lesser General Public License, or the MIT License, as well as through a commercial license sold by Vita Nuova, which removes the need to publish variants.
Limbo syntax is similar to C, although it includes features intended to make it simpler, safer, more powerful, and better suited for the development of concurrent, distributed systems. The Limbo compiler generates architecture-independent object code, which is interpreted by the Dis virtual machine or compiled just before runtime, improving performance.
The Dis VM works similarly to a complex instruction set computer (CISC), with instructions for arithmetic, control flow, data motion, process creation, synchronization and communication between processes, loading modules of code, and supporting higher-level data types, arrays, strings, lists, and communication channels.
Thus, Limbo supports modular and concurrent programming, strong type-checking, either at compile-time or runtime, interprocess communication over typed channels, automatic garbage collection, and simple abstract data types. Limbo also offers an advanced selection of primitive datatypes.
Limbo was influenced by Alef, C, Newsqueak, and Pascal. In turn, it influenced the development of Go, Rust, and Stackless Python. At this time, Limbo is implemented only in the Dis virtual machine and is used only in the Inferno operating system.
The focus of this guide is on the Limbo programming language. The resources listed in this category should strongly related to Limbo, any tools designed to facilitate the use of the language, and any other informational sources related to Limbo.
Recommended Resources
Arranged in the spirit of Go by Example, but targeted to the Limbo programming language, GitHub hosts several coding examples that have been tested on the Purgatorio fork of the Inferno operating system. Examples include, but are not limited to, the obligatory Hello, World program, as well as examples of values, constants, loops, if-else, switch case, arrays, slices, lists, functions, spawn, channels, abstract data types, modules, generics, and exceptions.
https://github.com/henesy/limbobyexample
Licensed under a GNU Free Documentation License, Progopedia is a web-based encyclopedia of programming languages that is maintained by approved volunteers. Its page on the Limbo programming language introduces goals, origins, and development of the language, lists its most significant features, paradigm, typing discipline, versions, and extensions. A Limbo debugger in Inferno OS is featured, and a “Hello, World!” coding example is published to the site.
http://progopedia.com/language/limbo/
Sys/Doc is an archive of papers, manuals, and articles on a variety of products, programming languages, companies, and other topics. Its section on Limbo includes documents on the language by Brian Kernighan, an overview and tutorial by Dennis M. Ritchie, and a PDF of the full version of the book, “Inferno Programming with Limbo,” which is available in print format from Amazon and other online retailers. Referrals to articles on related languages are included.
http://doc.cat-v.org/inferno/4th_edition/limbo_language/
Hosted by Vita Nuova, currently the holder of the Limbo operating system as well as the Inferno operating system, for which Limbo is the application programming language. Its features, sample programs, and an example of the use of advanced channels are put forward. Also featured is Limbo/Tk, a graphical user interface toolkit for Limbo. Available as free software, a commercial version of the language is available for those who are interested in using it to create commercial software.
http://www.vitanuova.com/inferno/limbo.html
