Birth of StopLang – A Useless Language With a Very Specific Purpose

So, I wanted to implement a garbage collector.

Cool idea, right? Memory management, pointer wizardry, existential dread—the whole buffet.

But then came the realization™️:

“Uhhh, how the hell do I even test this thing?”

You can’t really test a garbage collector in a vacuum (though that would collect garbage nicely). I needed some code, some variables, some actual garbage. Something to allocate memory, throw things around, and see if the collector actually does its job—or rage quits.

---

Option A: Plug it into an existing language

Like a real adult. Take some interpreter written in C, rip out its memory management, and bolt mine in.

But nah.
That way lies integration hell.
Do I look like someone who enjoys linker errors and segfaults from code I didn’t write? (No. No, I do not.)

---

Option B: Just build my own language

Like an unhinged adult.
So that’s what I did.

---

Okay so here’s the tea:

• 🛠️ It’ll be compiled, because I want my errors during dev time, not as jump scares during runtime.
• ⚙️ It’s in C, because:
  • C++ is too friendly (a little too comfy, not enough pain).
  • Assembly is too sadistic (I still like my sanity).
  • C is that spicy sweet spot of power and pain.

We're going full DIY on this one. Think of it as a language that’s just smart enough to test our GC, but dumb enough that we don’t have to spend years writing a parser.

---

Now, we needed a name. Something iconic. Something that tells you what this language is really about.

And so, I give you:

🛑 StopLang

Because:

• It’s the opposite of Go. It doesn’t want to “go” anywhere.
• It’s useless, and proudly so.

It’s not fast.
It’s not smart.
It’s barely a language.
But it’s ours, and it will be just good enough to build and test garbage collectors.

Bonus: It will be easier to read than Brainfuck, and more coherent than Brainrot. (Which honestly sounds like medical conditions at this point.)

---

📌 What’s Coming Next?

This blog would turn into a research paper if I tried to cover everything here. So we’re breaking it down:

1. This post: Why StopLang exists and how I got here (hello chaos)
2. Next post(s): Building the core of StopLang—basic syntax, data structures, compiler setup, maybe a sad little REPL
3. Then: Plugging in our garbage collectors and watching them either work… or work once and then segfault spectacularly

---

If you’ve read this far, bless your soul.
Thanks for bearing with the puns, the rambling, and the “what if I just wrote a language for no reason?” energy.

Stay tuned, fellow code gremlins.
More nonsense incoming soon. 😈🧹