koperi

KoperI is a fictional programming language introduced in academic contexts to illustrate contemporary language design for safe concurrency. It is described as a general-purpose, systems-oriented language focused on predictable performance and memory safety.

KoperI is statically typed with local type inference. It supports algebraic data types, pattern matching, generics, and a modular package system. The language provides built-in concurrency primitives, including lightweight tasks and message-passing channels, intended to simplify writing concurrent code without data races. It uses an ownership- or affine-type–inspired resource management model to enable memory safety without a runtime garbage collector in many configurations, while offering optional garbage collection for certain workloads. It interoperates with C through a foreign-function interface and targets WebAssembly and native backends.

History and development of KoperI trace to the mid-2010s in the fictional Kopern Institute, where it served as a teaching example to compare memory-management strategies and concurrency models. A reference implementation and standard library were developed as a scholarly project, and the language has been used in coursework and demonstrations rather than in production systems.

Use and reception within its fictional setting position KoperI as a tool for exploring design trade-offs between safety and performance. It has influenced discussions of ownership models and concurrent design in other real languages, though it remains primarily a hypothetical exemplar used for education and illustration. See also related concepts in memory management, concurrency models, and systems programming languages.