Limbo is the language in which one writes Inferno programs. Moreover, all the programming interfaces presented by Inferno are expressed in Limbo. To learn about programming in Inferno, we must therefore begin by learning about Limbo.
This chapter introduces the basics of Limbo programming. It uses simple and familiar programming problems to focus on Limbo itself; later chapters will build on these basics to explore the more unusual aspects of the Inferno environment.
Limbo draws ideas from a variety of other languages and adds a few of its own, so no particular language is assumed as a prerequisite of this chapter. However, this is not an introduction to computer programming; we assume you are comfortable programming in a procedural language such as C, C++, or Pascal.