AETHER Development Roadmap

This document outlines the version milestones and research directions for the AETHER programming language.

Milestone 1: Version 0.1 (Current Status)

Status: Completed
Focus: Build foundational parsing and JIT simulation frameworks.
Deliverables:
- Lexical analyzer and parser for intent declarations and expressions.
- Command-line toolchain (init, build, test, benchmark commands).
- Production-ready crdt library implementing state-based semilattices (GCounter, GSet, PNCounter, ORSet).
- Standing unit test suite.

Status: Planned
Focus: Type verification and developer tools.
Deliverables:
- Full static type checker for variable mutations and schemas.
- Multi-file module import system.
- Detailed compile-time error reporting with line and column spans.

Status: Planned
Focus: Developer Experience (DX) tooling.
Deliverables:
- Integrated package installer and solver.
- Automatic code formatter.
- Language Server Protocol (LSP) implementation for IDE completions.

Status: Planned
Focus: Real Execution Backends.
Deliverables:
- LLVM compiler backend integration.
- Native machine code generation (executables for Windows, macOS, Linux).
- In-memory execution profiling.

Status: Long-Term Goal
Focus: Production Release.
Deliverables:
- Standardized stable language specification.
- Complete, optimized standard library coverage.
- Production-ready compiler toolchain.

These areas represent conceptual explorations for future computing architectures:

Quantum Hardware Integration: Translating simulated quantum primitive gate sequences to physical QPU instruction standards (such as OpenQASM).
Physical Swarm Runtime: Running CRDT state-based convergence across real multi-node network clusters.
Brain-Computer Interface: Mapping cognitive signal streams (EEG inputs) to language primitives under a formal hardware abstraction layer.
Autonomous Self-Healing: Real JIT recovery of fault states using dynamic runtime patch generation.