New Programming Language Created by Human and AI in 24 Hours

Belgian engineer Bernard Lambeau, with the help of the AI assistant Claude, has created a new programming language named Elo. The entire process, from idea to a working prototype with documentation, took about 24 hours. The project yielded not just the language itself, but a complete toolset: a parser, a type system, three compilers, a standard library, a CLI utility, and a documentation website.

Elo is an expression language designed for data validation and describing business logic. Its key feature is the ability to compile into three popular languages: javascript, Ruby, and SQL, making it potentially useful for building cross-platform solutions, for example, in web development or data processing.

Lambeau, who has 30 years of development experience, emphasizes that in this project, AI acted not as a replacement for the programmer, but as a tool that significantly amplified his capabilities. Claude wrote code, created and ran tests, and independently fixed found errors. However, strategic planning, architecture design, and quality control remained with the human.

According to the developer, such symbiosis is especially effective when working with unfamiliar technologies, where AI compensates for a lack of experience, though success depends on a clearly structured methodology. Without control and properly set feedback loops, the result quickly becomes unmanageable. For the work, the author used a Claude Max subscription, costing about €180 (approximately 16,000 rubles) per month. During this period, besides Elo, he also completed several other open-source projects. The engineer notes that performing such a volume of work manually in the same timeframe would have been impossible.

The new language is positioned as a safe and simple alternative for scenarios that don't require Turing-complete capabilities. In the future, Elo could be integrated into low-code and no-code platforms, allowing for the safe execution of code generated with the help of AI.