# Hew

> A statically-typed, actor-oriented programming language for concurrent and distributed systems.

- Status: active
- Started: 2026-02-12
- Category: Systems & Languages
- URL: https://hew.sh
- Repo: https://github.com/hew-lang/hew
- Tags: language, rust, c++, mlir

Hew is a statically-typed, actor-oriented programming language I'm building for concurrent and distributed systems. The actor model is the centerpiece: typed message passing and lightweight actors are first-class, so concurrency is part of the language rather than bolted on through a library.

The implementation is a two-language affair — the compiler backend is C++20 built on MLIR and LLVM, while the surrounding toolchain (lexer, parser, type checker, runtime, formatter, and LSP) is written in Rust. It ships as a real CLI: `hew run`, `hew check`, `hew fmt`, an interactive REPL via `hew eval`, and project scaffolding with `hew init`.

There's a full site at [hew.sh](https://hew.sh) with docs, a tutorial, and a browser playground that sandboxes user code with gVisor. I've put real effort into onboarding too, with structured example paths that walk you from hello-world up to actors one step at a time.