Lobster programming language
Hacker ApprovedShares rank 77 of 163 programming languages by recommenders
Free programming language praised for simple, pragmatic design and memory management. Critics dislike its implementation inheritance.
Free programming language praised for simple, pragmatic design and memory management. Critics dislike its implementation inheritance.
16 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 15
- criticize it
- 1
- approval share
- 94%
Recommended in 4 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 15 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 15 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 4 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, 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, tidy and easy to use
“This guy seems to have learned many lessons of language simplification and design.”
Comment from 4 Mar 2026 in “Voxile: A ray-traced game made in its own engine and programming language” “it was pretty tidy, and quite easy to work with”
Comment from 18 Sep 2026 in “Goose Programming Language” “made to be pleasant to use first, fast second”
Comment from 24 Oct 2026 in “The Goose Programming Language” Pragmatic memory management approach
“borrow checker/lifetime analysis automatically inserts reference counters if it can't statically determine lifetime is so vastly superior”
Comment from 8 Mar 2026 in “The Lobster Programming Language” “seems to be trying to take a new(ish) and pragmatical approach to memory management”
Comment from 4 Mar 2026 in “Voxile: A ray-traced game made in its own engine and programming language” Rust-like exhaustive enum switches
“you'll appreciate that Lobster lets you use similar exhaustive switches to Rust's enum instead”
Comment from 11 Mar 2026 in “The Lobster Programming Language” “It's like Rust, in that it makes expressing common illegal states just outright impossible.”
Comment from 8 Mar 2026 in “The Lobster Programming Language” Built by a game developer
“you made Lobster lang, Cube2/Sauerbraten 3d shooter and voxray/voxile and lots of other cool things”
Comment from 25 Oct 2026 in “The Goose Programming Language” “reads like it was designed by someone who actually ships games”
Comment from 8 Mar 2026 in “The Lobster Programming Language”
Other programming languages people recommend
The four most recommended other programming 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.
See all 163 programming languages, rankedWhat people said
18 of the 20 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“you made Lobster lang, Cube2/Sauerbraten 3d shooter and voxray/voxile and lots of other cool things”
“Both are really interesting projects, BTW - thank you!”
“made to be pleasant to use first, fast second”
“my more modern languages (Goose and Lobster)”
“it was pretty tidy, and quite easy to work with”
“it took 2 hours, burned $12 in API costs, and I had to sit there the entire time”
“you'll appreciate that Lobster lets you use similar exhaustive switches to Rust's enum instead”
“I see implementation inheritance there and I don't like it.”
“borrow checker/lifetime analysis automatically inserts reference counters if it can't statically determine lifetime is so vastly superior”
“they do surprisingly well coding in it, especially in the context of a larger codebase as context”
“reads like it was designed by someone who actually ships games”
“It's like Rust, in that it makes expressing common illegal states just outright impossible.”
“I'm not sure I see how that's an improvement over using either `Foo` or `Box` on instantiation.”
“seems to be trying to take a new(ish) and pragmatical approach to memory management”
“I won’t say it isn’t impressive, but I’m having a hard time believing the hard part”
“This guy seems to have learned many lessons of language simplification and design.”
“Lobster seems to take the idea of optimisation and speed to new levels.”
“which i think is a very practical approach”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.