Special-Purpose Programming Language for the Financial Industry

[sramesh621]

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Hello,

I am currently in the process of developing a programming language for financial transactions, similar to how Perl is specialized for text processing and Fortran is specialized for numerical analysis. I was thinking that the language should have a number of different features that can help someone in this field, such as:

• Built-in data types for storing monetary values (most programmers who work on financial systems have to store the value as an integer number of cents to avoid rounding issues).

• Real-time integration with financial databases so that users can convert between different currencies.

• Built-in support for mathematical operations involving rational numbers— this should make multiplying by an APR percentage simpler.

• Native AI tools for predicting changes in the price of a stock.

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[andriiafanasiev]

You’re definitely thinking in the right direction with a finance-focused programming language. Fintech has a lot of subtle requirements that general-purpose languages don’t handle well, so the features you’re considering make sense. A language that treats monetary values as a first-class concept, works naturally with rational numbers, and can interact with currency data in real time would solve problems that developers usually patch together with libraries and workarounds.

It also makes sense to think about transactional safety as something built into the language itself. Having atomic operations, automatic rollback behavior, and reliable handling of time-based financial data would make the language feel purpose-built rather than just another general tool. Even the idea of integrating AI models for price prediction fits naturally into the financial domain and could make such a language stand out.

[26ryxn]

In the short term, the financial industry will continue to heavily utilize Python, Java, and SQL for their specific purposes. There is also a notable rise in the use of more modern languages like Go and Rust.

[liy8]

Financial domain-specific languages already exist (DAML, LexiFi's MLFi, Rebel). Your proposed features—monetary types, rational numbers, and decimal arithmetic—are already solved by libraries like BigDecimal (Java), decimal.Decimal (Python), and JSR 354 (Java Money). Real-time currency integration and AI prediction are better as libraries, not language features, since they require external APIs and constantly evolving models.
Creating a new general-purpose language for finance won't gain traction—banks have massive codebases in Python, Java, C++, and regulatory/compliance constraints. Instead, build a domain-specific library or embedded DSL within an existing language, which is how most successful financial DSLs work (combinator libraries in Haskell/Scala).

[sramesh621]

Thank you for this informative reply. I tried Google, but it just told me that Python and Java were commonly used.

[chrryctr1509]

Hello,

I am currently developing a domain-specific programming language focused on financial transactions — in the same spirit that Perl is specialized for text processing and Fortran for numerical computation. I am exploring what built-in features such a language should provide in order to be genuinely useful for developers working in finance.

Some of the features I am considering include:

Native monetary data types
Most developers in finance must represent money as an integer number of cents to avoid floating-point rounding issues. I am considering adding a first-class Money or Decimal type with guaranteed precision.

Real-time integration with financial data sources
This would allow developers to perform currency conversions, retrieve asset prices, or query financial instruments directly from the language runtime.

Built-in support for rational and high-precision math
Many financial calculations (e.g., interest rates, APR, amortization) benefit from exact rational arithmetic or arbitrary-precision decimals.

Native AI/ML utilities for financial prediction
For example, forecasting market movements or estimating volatility. This could be provided as libraries or language-level primitives.

I’m interested in feedback on whether these kinds of features align with the overall direction of GitHub Projects or whether there are best practices for structuring a language-development project within GitHub’s ecosystem.

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I have read the above statement and can confirm that my post is relevant to the GitHub feature areas Issues and/or Projects.

[instrukturbabastudio]

Cool