Shen
Shares rank 149 of 163 programming languages by recommenders
Recommended for its portable kernel and highly expressive, programmable type system. Critics say there are few examples or documentation and it is tedious to work with.
Recommended for its portable kernel and highly expressive, programmable type system. Critics say there are few examples or documentation and it is tedious to work with.
8 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 5
- criticize it
- 3
- approval share
- 63%
Recommended in 5 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: 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 5 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
Portable to many runtimes
“Combination of sequent calculus and prolog in a highly portable lightweight kernel that is easy to port to many runtimes”
Comment from 26 May 2026 in “Formal Verification Gates for AI Coding Loops” “Shen is extremely portable and has been ported to a lot of different target runtimes”
Comment from 21 May 2026 in “Formal Verification Gates for AI Coding Loops” Expressive, programmable type system
“it's sequent calculus and unique type system (type system itself is Turing complete) give you a lot of flexibility here”
Comment from 20 May 2026 in “Formal Verification Gates for AI Coding Loops” “it is far more flexible and expressive than what people think of as a "type system"”
Comment from 20 May 2026 in “Formal Verification Gates for AI Coding Loops” “It's type system itself is Turing complete and very flexible / expressive.”
Comment from 20 May 2026 in “Formal Verification Gates for AI Coding Loops” - Comment from 27 Apr 2026 in “Mine, an IDE for Coalton and Common Lisp”
Sequent calculus and Prolog-style kernel
“Combination of sequent calculus and prolog in a highly portable lightweight kernel that is easy to port to many runtimes”
Comment from 26 May 2026 in “Formal Verification Gates for AI Coding Loops” “it's sequent calculus and unique type system (type system itself is Turing complete) give you a lot of flexibility here”
Comment from 20 May 2026 in “Formal Verification Gates for AI Coding Loops”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Few examples or usage shown
“But not a single example of actually using the language to do anything.”
Comment from 17 Dec 2025 in “Liskell – Haskell Semantics with Lisp Syntax [pdf]” “I can’t find a single example of the language on its website.”
Comment from 16 Dec 2025 in “Liskell – Haskell Semantics with Lisp Syntax [pdf]” Drama and self-inflicted problems
“Looking forward to someone picking up a project with the same goals as Shen without the drama.”
Comment from 15 Dec 2025 in “History of Declarative Programming (2021)” “In so many ways, Shen is its own worst enemy.”
Comment from 15 Dec 2025 in “History of Declarative Programming (2021)”
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
14 of the 16 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“With Coalton and Shen they are explicitly reaching for the static-types level”
“Combination of sequent calculus and prolog in a highly portable lightweight kernel that is easy to port to many runtimes”
“Shen is extremely portable and has been ported to a lot of different target runtimes”
“it is far more flexible and expressive than what people think of as a "type system"”
“That's not a good thing! A Turing complete type system means that compilation is potentially undecidable and non-terminating.”
“It's type system itself is Turing complete and very flexible / expressive.”
“it's sequent calculus and unique type system (type system itself is Turing complete) give you a lot of flexibility here”
“now you have a spec that is internally consistent, straightforward for human to understand”
“Shen wins for raw expressive power and programmable types”
“But not a single example of actually using the language to do anything.”
“I can’t find a single example of the language on its website.”
“Looking forward to someone picking up a project with the same goals as Shen without the drama.”
“In so many ways, Shen is its own worst enemy.”
“quite fascinating - and tedious to work with”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.