Show HN: Lambda 0.2 – a func language better than TypeScrip, jq and jQuery

Posted by henryluo on Tuesday March 24, 2026 @09:41AM
from the show-hn dept.

What's your tool chain for data and document processing? - jq is great, but limited to JSON; and jQuery limited to HTML; templating systems get messy for non-trivial logic; TypeScript lacks pattern matching and schema support.

So I built Lambda — an expressive functional language that combines the power of Lisp, TypeScript, and many DSLs like jq, jQuery, RelaxNG, etc.

It has a lightweight 9 MB runtime, built from scratch in C/C++, that provides an end-to-end document processing pipeline (parse → validate/query/transform → layout → render/view).

Internally, Lambda parse different input formats (Markdown, Wiki, HTML/XML, JSON/YAML/TOML/CSV, LaTeX, PDF, …) into a unified Lambda/Mark node tree, then transformed with Lambda scripts, validated with schemas, and then rendered via the Radiant HTML/CSS/SVG layout and rendering engine.

Repo (with examples and demos): https://github.com/henry-luo/lambda

I’d love feedback on: where this could actually be useful in your workflows; language design (what feels unnecessary vs. missing); etc.

( 17 comments | 7 points | on HN )

Re:Show HN: Lambda 0.2 – a func language better than TypeScr... by gao_xing on Tuesday March 24, 2026 @09:55AM (#47502661)

A game-changing programming language has just emerged! It’s time to say goodbye to those outdated, inefficient, and syntactically cumbersome languages.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Show HN: Lambda 0.2 – a func language better than TypeScr... by henryluo on Tuesday March 24, 2026 @10:04AM (#47502784)

Hope it will change the way people work with data and documents.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Show HN: Lambda 0.2 – a func language better than TypeScr... by henryluo on Tuesday March 24, 2026 @09:52AM (#47502621)

While Lambda still has a pretty static GUI at the moment. My plan is to build it into a fully interactive, editable UI on all kinds of document data.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Show HN: Lambda 0.2 – a func language better than TypeScr... by eddy6363 on Tuesday March 24, 2026 @10:05AM (#47502821)

I'm particular interested in large PDF parsing, for those table form PDF content. Biggest problem of PDF parsing is the relativity of content according to content that output not the PDF internal layout box sequence. Sometime parse result had content sequence off.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Show HN: Lambda 0.2 – a func language better than TypeScr... by henryluo on Tuesday March 24, 2026 @10:15AM (#47502940)

Lambda's PDF support is still very limited at moment. I do plan to enhance it in next release.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Show HN: Lambda 0.2 – a func language better than TypeScr... by tinaWq on Tuesday March 24, 2026 @10:08AM (#47502860)

Both the set of features and the benchmark results look really impressive. Well done

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Show HN: Lambda 0.2 – a func language better than TypeScr... by henryluo on Tuesday March 24, 2026 @10:15AM (#47502951)

thanks.

As for the performance, I'm standing on the shoulder of great tools like MIR JIT compiler.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Show HN: Lambda 0.2 – a func language better than TypeScr... by coding_gpt on Tuesday March 24, 2026 @10:04AM (#47502781)

The feature set looks compelling. I'm genuinely eager to dive in.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Show HN: Lambda 0.2 – a func language better than TypeScr... by henryluo on Tuesday March 24, 2026 @10:05AM (#47502813)

Glad to hear that. Note that the language is still being developed, and there're bugs here and there. So bear with those bugs. But it should be fun to try it out.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Show HN: Lambda 0.2 – a func language better than TypeScr... by philonoist on Wednesday March 25, 2026 @02:19AM (#47513938)

Searching and narrowing down to doubts in this language in google with this name will be difficult :/

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Show HN: Lambda 0.2 – a func language better than TypeScr... by henryluo on Wednesday March 25, 2026 @05:50AM (#47515264)

Yes, I thought of this issue when I name it Lambda. But I like the name 'Lambda'. Once get over the initial stage, Lambda will be easy for people to remember.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Show HN: Lambda 0.2 – a func language better than TypeScr... by ifh-hn on Wednesday March 25, 2026 @10:52AM (#47518124)

I know this isn't quite the same thing but how does this compare to nushell, which is my current goto for data processing and cli related stuff. It took provides a standard language and processes the various data formats it can read into tanks and records.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Show HN: Lambda 0.2 – a func language better than TypeScr... by perpetua on Wednesday March 25, 2026 @11:28AM (#47518701)

Thanks for bringing up Nushell. I don't have working experience with Nushell. Just by looking at the documentation, I think the obvious differences are: 1. Nushell is a simple shell script. Lambda is a full functional language. Nushell does not have class support. 2. Nushell does not have built-in markup data support. 3. Nushell does not have rich type, pattern matching and schema support. 4. Nushell is CLI. Lambda supports both CLI and GUI.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Show HN: Lambda 0.2 – a func language better than TypeScr... by ifh-hn on Wednesday March 25, 2026 @01:18PM (#47520330)

Nushell is a lot more than a simple shell script, it's a full programming language. Certainly no markup support builtin though.

Unless I'm misunderstanding nushell has a type system and is strongly/gradually typed. And there is pattern matching too, though unsure what you mean by schema support?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Show HN: Lambda 0.2 – a func language better than TypeScr... by perpetua on Wednesday March 25, 2026 @09:30PM (#47525682)

thanks for pointing out. I did not notice that nushell has pattern matching. for schema support, I mean something like RelaxNG, or XML Schema.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Show HN: Lambda 0.2 – a func language better than TypeScr... by perpetua on Wednesday March 25, 2026 @09:30PM (#47525685)

I agree that Nushell is close to a full programming language.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Show HN: Lambda 0.2 – a func language better than TypeScr... by perpetua on Wednesday March 25, 2026 @09:34PM (#47525707)

Lambda has first-class type support. Type can be constructed like data at runtime under Lambda, which is more powerful than most programming languages.

[ Parent | on HN ]