# Loon programming language

21 Hacker News commenters recommended Loon programming language and 5 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 3 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** A minimal Lisp with ownership-based safety and type inference that hides types from view, praised for elegance and polish. Common caveats are the bracket syntax and that it is not yet optimised for speed.

## Why people recommend it

- Types inferred, no annotations needed (3 comments): "I like the ubiquitous type inference. I wish that part of Loon were less coupled to the allocation model though." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48081060)) "I like types being invisible. Square brackets feels like a needless change." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47104496)) "everything is typed, but I don't need to annotate" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47104063))
- Cool, promising concept (3 comments): "Loon looks very cool, I didn't expect something like that to appear at all." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47116545)) "looks like it could just flat out become my favorite language." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47104316)) "Honestly, that's very cool" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48080819))
- Ownership model beyond Rust syntax (2 comments): "a Lisp built around the concept of ownership is much more interesting than just a way to write Rust via S-expressions" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48080421)) "takes heavy inspiration from Rust" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48079758))
- Polished with good docs (2 comments): "I love this! The docs are really good and I am looking forward to playing with this." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47113424)) "It’s rare that something this new is this polished." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47105833))

## What people warn about

- Bracket syntax disliked (4 comments): "I don't love the brackets syntax, or the [op val1 val2] ([* x x]) style" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47104659)) "I don't love the brackets syntax" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47104370)) "I like types being invisible. Square brackets feels like a needless change." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47104496))
- Slow and not yet optimised (2 comments): "Definitely cool in concept, but very performance-intensive and slow." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47104803)) "it demonstrates that the language works, but its not optimised yet" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47105005))
- Examples don't run correctly (2 comments): "these below doesn't run correctly" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47109081)) "Unfortunately it seems like this doesn't currently work as expected when I use it in the playground" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47104757))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Rust](https://hackerapproved.com/p/rust.md): 2039 recommend
- [Go](https://hackerapproved.com/p/go-programming-language.md): 1254 recommend
- [Python](https://hackerapproved.com/p/python.md): 1067 recommend
- [Zig](https://hackerapproved.com/p/zig.md): 743 recommend
- [TypeScript](https://hackerapproved.com/p/typescript.md): 574 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Loon programming language", https://hackerapproved.com/p/loon-programming-language/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).