Language Overview

Philosophy

Zap is designed around a simple principle: say what you mean, and nothing more. The language favours explicit over implicit, clarity over cleverness, and composition over inheritance.

Key Features

• Strong static typing with type inference — you rarely need to write types explicitly, but they’re always known at compile time.
• First-class functions — functions are values, can be stored in variables, passed as arguments, and returned from other functions.
• Pattern matching — destructure values and branch on their shape in a single, readable expression.
• Immutable by default — bindings are immutable unless explicitly declared mutable with mut.
• No null — Zap uses an Option type to represent the absence of a value.
• Module system — organise code into modules, import what you need, and keep your namespaces clean.

Quick Reference

Concept	Zap Syntax
Variable	let x = 42
Mutable var	let mut x = 42
Function	fn add(a: Int, b: Int) -> Int { a + b }
If / else	if cond { ... } else { ... }
Loop	for item in list { ... }
Match	match value { Pattern => expr, ... }
Module import	import std.io

Dive Deeper

• Syntax Basics — variables, expressions, statements
• Types — primitives, composites, generics
• Functions — declarations, closures, higher-order
• Control Flow — if/else, loops, match
• Modules — imports, exports, project structure