Cicada scripting language
Shares rank 12 of 14 scripting languages by recommenders
Recommended for its clean design, small 250kB size and simple C API. Critics raise memory leak concerns and find the syntax unintuitive.
Recommended for its clean design, small 250kB size and simple C API. Critics raise memory leak concerns and find the syntax unintuitive.
8 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 5
- criticize it
- 3
- approval share
- 63%
Recommended in 2 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 5 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 1.6 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 2 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, not met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Simple, clean design choices
“The C registration API sounds clean - explicit pairing of names to function pointers is about as simple as it gets.”
Comment from 30 Jan 2026 in “Show HN: Cicada – a scripting language that integrates with C” “The "all functions are automatically variadic" design is a nice simplicity win.”
Comment from 31 Jan 2026 in “Show HN: Cicada – a scripting language that integrates with C”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Memory leak and safety concerns
“Memory safety can't be solved by just eliminating pointer arithmetic, there's more stuff needed to achieve it”
Comment from 30 Jan 2026 in “Show HN: Cicada – a scripting language that integrates with C” “Does this mean that Cicada will happily and wildly leak memory if I allocate short lived objects in a loop?”
Comment from 31 Jan 2026 in “Show HN: Cicada – a scripting language that integrates with C” Unintuitive syntax
“the syntax seems unintuitive”
Comment from 30 Jan 2026 in “Show HN: Cicada – a scripting language that integrates with C”
Other scripting languages people recommend
The four most recommended other scripting languages, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lua | 186 | 62 | 75% | 12 | 10 yrs5 owners | Approved |
| awk | 67 | 18 | 79% | 12 | — | Approved |
| AutoHotkey | 44 | 5 | 90% | 11 | — | Approved |
| GDScript | 22 | 16 | 58% | 9 | — | — |
| Cicada scripting languageThis page | 5 | 3 | 63% | 2 | — | — |
What people said
9 of the 10 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“it's better than grep and meaningfully reduces churn”
“Cicada is designed for individuals who are not developers or engineers”
“This is easy in Cicada because of ‘code substitution’ (one of the innovations I’m proudest of”
“The "all functions are automatically variadic" design is a nice simplicity win.”
“Does this mean that Cicada will happily and wildly leak memory if I allocate short lived objects in a loop?”
“Memory safety can't be solved by just eliminating pointer arithmetic, there's more stuff needed to achieve it”
“The C registration API sounds clean - explicit pairing of names to function pointers is about as simple as it gets.”
“the syntax seems unintuitive”
“The 250kB size is impressive for a language with inheritance and N-dimensional arrays.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.