alt Hacker News> 1. It's the C programming language represented as SSA form and with some of the UB in the C spec given a strict definition.
This is becoming steadily less true over time, as LLVM IR is growing somewhat more divorced from C/C++, but that's probably a good way to start thinking about it if you're comfortable with C's corner case semantics.
(In terms of frontends, I've seen "Rust needs/wants this" as much as Clang these days, and Flang and Julia are also pretty relevant for some things.)
There's currently a working group in LLVM on building better, LLVM-based semantics, and the current topic du jour of that WG is a byte type proposal.
> This is becoming steadily less true over time, as LLVM IR is growing somewhat more divorced from C/C++, but that's probably a good way to start thinking about it if you're comfortable with C's corner case semantics.
First of all, you're right. I'm going to reply with amusing pedantry but I'm not really disagreeing
I feel like in some ways LLVM is becoming more like C-in-SSA...
> and the current topic du jour of that WG is a byte type proposal.
That's a case of becoming more like C! C has pointer provenance and the idea that byte copies can copy "more" than just the 8 bits, somehow.
(The C provenance proposal may be in a state where it's not officially part of the spec - I'm not sure exactly - but it's effectively part of the language in the sense that a lot of us already consider it to be part of the language.)