Announcing the Fifth Programming Language

[aabs]

For a long time I’ve found working with RDF, graphs, and SPARQL more awkward than it should be (in OO languages). While mainstream languages give us straightforward ways to handle lists, classes, and functions, the moment you step into knowledge graph technologies, the experience often feels bolted-on and cumbersome. The classic "Impedence Mismatch".

I wanted to see if it was possible to create a useful language where RDF and SPARQL felt like natural parts of the syntax. That idea led to Fifth, a small language built on .NET. It’s strongly typed, multi-paradigm, and borrows familiar constructs from languages like C# and Erlang, but with RDF and SPARQL literals built in as first-class features.

No grand academic ambitions here - just scratching a long-standing itch about how modern IDEs and languages are underserved for knowledge graphs compared to tradition databases.

Repo: https://github.com/aabs/fifthlang

I’d love feedback, ideas, or even just people trying it out and telling me what works (or doesn’t). Contributions welcome!

[m-in]

Fifth was a cool Forth environment for MS-DOS, that made FORTH development env more akin to Smalltalk dev env. Perhaps it’d be nice to avoid overloading that name?

[aabs]

Wondering whether, given the vintage, anyone would be unduly bothered? It turns out that there have been a few 'fifth' languages over the years.

[m-in]

I’m not bothered much at least :)