Hew has a broad language target, and v0.9.3 is a concrete compiler/runtime release. These answers separate what works now from what the language is built to reach.
Hew is for services where failure, concurrency, and protocol boundaries should be part of the language contract instead of conventions spread across libraries. Actors, supervision, wire types, and native compilation are designed together so the compiler can keep more of the system model visible.
OTP remains the reference for fault-tolerant systems. Hew takes a different trade: static types, compile-time actor boundaries, protocol-aware tooling, and native LLVM output while carrying the let-it-crash lesson forward.
Rust plus Tokio is excellent when you want explicit ownership and an async runtime. Hew starts from a different center: actors, supervised failure, structured task scopes, and wire contracts are language features, not architecture that each project has to assemble by hand.
Hew needs a serious native backend without inventing a code generator from scratch. LLVM gives mature optimization, strong platform reach, and a well-understood IR to target. The compiler goes directly from Hew MIR to LLVM IR in Rust.
Hew is not production-ready yet. It is ready for experiments, local services, language evaluation, and contributors who want to work near compiler and runtime internals. For systems where downtime has business or safety consequences, the status page lays out the current boundary.
The current release can compile and run real Hew programs with functions, types, actors, supervision, state machines, wire types, tests, a playground, and native LLVM output. The examples page shows the best entry points.
The roadmap tracks distributed actor ergonomics, broader protocol guarantees, package workflow, backpressure behavior, resource-lifetime hardening, and production operations. The status page tracks each one.
Hew has no global garbage collector. Ordinary owned values release recursively, actor state remains isolated, and affine resources keep one owner. A <code>#[resource]</code> value closes automatically at scope exit; a <code>#[linear]</code> value must reach an explicit consuming action on every path.
Hew is currently maintained by one person. The roadmap is sized to that. Focused contributions — bug reports, documentation, examples, and scoped issues — land best; larger design work should start in an issue or discussion.
Hew is dual-licensed under MIT OR Apache-2.0. That keeps adoption straightforward for personal, academic, and commercial use while matching common Rust ecosystem practice.
Start concrete: report a reproducible bug, improve a doc, add a focused example, or join a design discussion before taking on a broad change. The community page points to the durable channels.
They are independent tracks. A Hew release version names a shipped compiler/runtime/tooling bundle. A HEW-SPEC revision names language-spec history. A release can implement a spec level whose revision number does not match the release number.