About Eve
Eve is an experimental programming language that grew out of research into making programming more approachable for people without a traditional software engineering background. It pairs the language with its own development environment, and the public preview, version 0.3 alpha, is described in the repository as no longer under active development.
The project combines language design with database concepts, and its topics list it alongside IDE and database tooling, reflecting an approach where querying and reacting to data sit close to the language core. Getting started involves installing Node.js, cloning the Eve starter repository, and either browsing bundled example programs through a program switcher or running a specific program directly; it can also be installed as an npm package for use inside another project.
Learning resources included a quick-start tutorial, a syntax reference and a language handbook, along with an active mailing list archive at the time of development. Eve is released under the Apache-2.0 license and remains useful mainly as a historical reference for alternative programming paradigms rather than for new production work.
Key features
- Custom human-first programming language
- Bundled IDE and program switcher
- Database-oriented language core
- Example programs included for learning
- Installable as an npm package
Good fit for
- →Exploring alternative programming language design
- →Studying database-integrated language concepts
- Built with
- TypeScript
- Tags
- programming-language
- research
- database
- ide
- typescript
- archived
Eve: questions and answers
- What is Eve used for?
- Eve is an Apache-licensed, research-stage programming language and IDE designed for human-first programming, built around a relational database model; development has stopped. It is a good fit for studying database-integrated language concepts.
- Is Eve open source?
- Yes. Eve is open source under the Apache-2.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at witheve/Eve and is written mainly in TypeScript.
- Is Eve free?
- Yes. Eve is open source, so the software itself is free to use.
- What are some alternatives to Eve?
- Similar open-source tools in the Developer Tools category include Visual Studio Code, code-server and JupyterLab. SaaS products in the same category include WebStorm, Artiforge and ChatRAG.
- Is Eve actively maintained?
- The most recent commit to Eve was on 20 March 2018. The project has 7.2k stars on GitHub.
Open-source alternatives to Eve
See all
Visual Studio Code
Developer Tools
Visual Studio Code
MITvs Sublime Text★ 193k
code-server
Developer Tools
VS Code in the browser
MITvs Replit★ 80k
JupyterLab
Developer Tools
JupyterLab computational environment.
BSD-3-Clausevs MATLAB★ 15k
Tabby
Developer Tools
A terminal for a more modern age
MITvs Warp★ 75k
IT Tools
Developer Tools
Collection of handy online tools for developers, with great UX.
GPL-3.0★ 41k
VSCodium
Developer Tools
binary releases of VS Code without MS branding/telemetry/licensing
MITvs Sublime Text★ 33k
SaaS alternatives to Eve
See all
WebStorm
Developer Tools
JetBrains IDE for JavaScript and TypeScript with framework support and refactoring
SaaS
Artiforge
Developer Tools
Tool that gives AI coding agents project context to improve code generation
SaaS
ChatRAG
Developer Tools
Next.js boilerplate for launching RAG-powered chatbot SaaS products
SaaS
CLion
Developer Tools
Cross-platform IDE for C and C++ development from JetBrains
SaaS
DataSpell
Developer Tools
JetBrains IDE for data science with notebook and Python support
SaaS
Deska
Developer Tools
Spatial IDE with an infinite canvas for running AI coding agents, a browser and notes side by side
SaaS

