Slang shading language
Hacker ApprovedShading language in Developer tools
Free open-source shading language with strong developer tooling, deep integration, and a usable printf; one commenter finds its C-like syntax quirky.
Free open-source shading language with strong developer tooling, deep integration, and a usable printf; one commenter finds its C-like syntax quirky.
10 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 10
- criticize it
- 0
- approval share
- 100%
Recommended in 5 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 10 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- Nobody criticizes itNeeds 2 to 1 or better, 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
Strong developer experience and tooling
“the most value adding, IMHO, is the DevEx and deep integration with SecDb”
Comment from 14 Jan 2026 in “The $LANG Programming Language” “Especially when using the tooling from who created it”
Comment from 25 Dec 2025 in “CUDA Tile Open Sourced” “Slang is a fantastic developer experience.”
Comment from 25 Dec 2025 in “CUDA Tile Open Sourced”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Quirky C-like syntax
“the somewhat quirky C like language that ran with it”
Comment from 25 Jun 2026 in “An oral history of Bank Python (2021)”
What people said
9 of the 10 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“the core idea is to get a very dense and terse language that LLMs can emit while guaranteeing safety and performance.”
“the somewhat quirky C like language that ran with it”
“It sounds a great language!”
“So, https://shader-slang.org/ then :)”
“the most value adding, IMHO, is the DevEx and deep integration with SecDb”
“Vulkan and GLSL (and Slang) have a usable printf out of the box”
“because its automatic differentiation type system is so nice”
“Especially when using the tooling from who created it”
“Slang is a fantastic developer experience.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.