Coming from another language

Nova borrows deliberately from several languages, and each will feel partly familiar:

• its syntax from C# and TypeScript: braces, fn name(x: T) -> R, let and var, generics in <…>;
• its ownership and borrowing from Rust, with less annotation and a simpler checker;
• its explicit allocators from Zig, with use-after-free made a compile error;
• its regions from Cyclone, and its compile-through-C design and compiler-managed memory from Goose;
• its deterministic destruction from C++'s RAII, without the undefined behaviour.

These pages map what you know to Nova, show the same program side by side, and point out the differences that will trip you up.

If you know	Read	The biggest changes
Rust	Nova for Rust programmers	no lifetime syntax on plain borrows; allocators per allocation; checks in every build; no macros or traits-as-types
Zig	Nova for Zig programmers	use-after-free and dangling references are compile errors; checks never turn off; generics instead of comptime
C or C++	Nova for C and C++ programmers	the compiler tracks ownership and borrows; no undefined behaviour; no preprocessor
C#, Java or TypeScript	Nova for C#, Java and TypeScript programmers	no garbage collector, no classes or inheritance, no exceptions, no null references
Go	Nova for Go programmers	no garbage collector; errors propagate with ?; interfaces are explicit and static; no goroutines yet

A comparison of the languages as a whole, in one table, is on the repository's README.