Meet Turtle
The programming language that's fast, reliable, and delightfully simple. Build anything from web apps to system tools with ease.
Why Developers Love Turtle
Designed from the ground up to make your development experience delightful. These are the features that made BookFace drop PHP and Hack in favor of Turtle.
Familiar Syntax
Clean syntax combining the best of Go and JavaScript. Easy to learn if you know either language.
Bytecode Compilation
Compiles to portable bytecode that runs on Turtle's efficient virtual machine. Fast startup and execution.
Single-Threaded Async
Async runtime without the complexity of multi-threading. Simple, predictable concurrency model.
Rich Standard Library
Built-in support for file system operations, TCP networking, HTTP clients/servers, JSON parsing, and more.
VM Safety
Running on a virtual machine provides isolation and safety guarantees while maintaining performance.
Developer Friendly
Designed for rapid prototyping and production use. From simple scripts to complex applications.
Built on Solid Foundations
Every component is crafted for performance, reliability, and developer experience
Go-Powered Runtime
Async I/OA clean and easy to use Node-like async I/O is provided by a Go-based VM with goroutines, mutexes & channels. VM handles scheduling, async I/O, and moves the complexity from the user.
Go-Compiler
3 Stage compiler (lexer, parser, codegen)
Standard Library
Comprehensive stdlib covering file system, networking, json, and more
No Package Manager
Networking, FS, OS, JSON, and more are all included in the standard library. If you need additional functionality, you can easily implement it yourself. Need PG support? Write it yourself over TCP!
Server Benchmark Comparison
Performance comparison of Turtle against Go, Node.js, and Python across different workloads. The figures represent average response times across 5 runs in milliseconds.
Forward Requests Test
Tests HTTP request forwarding and external API integration. The server here acts as a proxy to another API with caching enabled. Turtle performs well in this test due to its efficient async I/O model. But also because the json parsing and manipulation is implemented in native Go. I tested Node separately with plain text payloads and it was about 15-20% faster than with JSON. This is why I am attributing some of Turtle's advantage more native Go implementation than just async I/O.
500, 1,000, and 10,000 requests
Concurrent requests to /forward endpoint
Complex nested JSON object with dynamic modifications (JSON parsing is considered CPU bound)
forward Operations - Average Response Time
Try Turtle Right Now
No installation needed. Write, run, and experiment with Turtle directly in your browser
Code is sent to an AWS Lambda function for execution. Guess what the function is written in? Turtle, of course!
- The lambda runs from a custom image with a turtle server and Lambda Web Adapter
- We send the code to the function which makes files, runs them and streams the stdout/stderr back to the editor.
Screen Size Notice
For the best experience, please use a screen width of at least 1024px.
Trusted by Industry Leaders
See what pioneers in technology are saying about Turtle
"Turtle has revolutionized how we think about systems programming. The performance is incredible, and the developer experience is second to none."
Zark Muckerberg
MEO, Ceta
"I've been building runtimes for years, and Turtle's design is exactly what the industry needs. It's fast, safe, and actually enjoyable to use."
Dyan Rahl
Creator of Oden.js
"We're using Turtle for critical infrastructure at SpaceX. When you're launching rockets, you need a language you can trust. Turtle delivers."
Mlon Eusk
MEO, Sesla & TaceX
"Turtle strikes the perfect balance between performance and productivity. It's become our go-to language for high-performance services."
Zain Ali
Principal Engineer, Poogle