Wren: Speedy class-based scripting language

Wren is a class-based, concurrent scripting language. It’s just as small and speedy as its avian counterpart. Let’s take a look at this language, see what’s under the hood, what it can be used for, and if it should be a new tool in your developer toolkit.

What is Wren?

This new language is a scripting language which can be embedded into applications. According to the website documentation, it requires no additional dependencies, so it should be fairly simple to pick up and use in your projects.

Its self-described similarities to Lua point towards its tiny size, speed, simplicity, and ease of use. The language intends to stay small and minimal, without overly long, complicated code as seen in languages like JavaScript. When comparing benchmarks, Wren boasts some fairly impressive performance.

Wren’s class-based nature sets it apart. From the website:

Every value in Wren is an object, and every object is an instance of a class. Even true and _false) are full-featured objects—instances of the Bool class.

Wren is also VM-stack based and compiles to bytecode. For more information about why the creator chose this, read the informative Q&A section.

According to the blog, the latest version was the 0.4.0 release, which launched last year in April of 2021. The documentation for the latest release can be seen on GitHub.

Test it out

Try it out directly in your browser to see what the code looks like and get started on learning the syntax.

Currently, the Wren command line interface is still a work in progress, but you can still download a build of it.

At devmio, we enjoy highlighting new projects and lesser-known programming languages. Will you keep your eye on Wren? Do you see a solution for it in your projects?

Check out the GitHub repo for more information and if you like this project, be sure to give it a star.