This directory contains current, accepted documentation underpinning Carbon. These documents cover all aspects of Carbon ranging from the project down to detailed designs for specific language features.

If you're trying to learn more about Carbon, we recommend starting at /README.md.

Carbon language's design and rationale are documented in the design/ directory. This documentation is intended to support the following audiences:

• People who wish to determine whether Carbon would be the right choice for a project compared to other existing languages.
• People working on the evolution of the Carbon language who wish to understand the rationale and motivation for existing design decisions.
• People working on a specification or implementation of the Carbon language who need a detailed understanding of the intended design.
• People writing Carbon code who wish to understand why the language rules are the way they are.

This is in contrast to proposals, which document the individual decisions that led to this design (along with other changes to the Carbon project), including the rationale and alternatives considered.

The project/ directory contains project-related documentation for Carbon, including:

• goals, and the principles and roadmap derived from those goals,
• how the project works, and
• how to contribute.

The guides/ directory contains to-be-written end-user documentation for developers writing programs in Carbon.

The spec/ directory contains the to-be-written formal specification of the Carbon language. This is for implementers of compilers or other tooling. This is intended to complement the interactive language explorer tool.