Article · Wikipedia archive · Last revised May 27, 2026

Bosque (programming language)

Bosque is a free and open-source programming language designed and developed by Microsoft that was inspired by the syntax and data types of TypeScript and the semantics of ML and Node/JavaScript. Design goals for the language include better software quality and improved developer productivity.

Last revised
May 27, 2026
Read time
≈ 2 min
Length
362 w
Citations
10
Source
Bosque
ParadigmMulti-paradigm: functional, typed
FamilyECMAScript
Designed byMark Marron
DeveloperMicrosoft
First appearedMarch 3, 2019 (2019-03-03)1
LicenseMIT
Filename extensions.bsq2
Websitewww.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/bosque-programming-language/
Influenced by
JavaScript, TypeScript, ML

Bosque is a free and open-source programming language designed and developed by Microsoft that was inspired by the syntax and data types of TypeScript and the semantics of ML and Node/JavaScript.34 Design goals for the language include better software quality and improved developer productivity.56

Overview

Bosque was designed by Microsoft Research computer scientist Mark Marron,7 who describes the language as an effort to move beyond the structured programming model that became popular in the 1970s.38

The structured programming paradigm, in which flow control is managed with loops, conditionals, and subroutines, became popular after a 1968 paper titled "Go To Statement Considered Harmful" by computer scientist Edsger Dijkstra. Marron believes we can do better by getting rid of sources of complexity like loops, mutable state, and reference equality. The result is Bosque, which represents a programming paradigm that Marron, in a paper he wrote, calls "regularized programming."

The Bosque specification, parser, type checker, reference interpreter, and IDE support are licensed under MIT License and available on GitHub.9

Examples

Add two numbers

function add2(x: Int, y: Int): Int {
    return x + y;
}

add2(2, 3)     // 5
add2(x=2, y=3) // 5
add2(y=2, 5)   // 7
See also

See also

References

References

Further reading

Further reading

External links