Comparison of programming languages

Programming languages are used for controlling the behavior of a machine (often a computer). Like natural languages, programming languages conform to rules for syntax and semantics.

Programming language comparisons
  • Languages with dependent types
  • Comparison of type systems

There are thousands of programming languages[1] and new ones are created every year. Few languages ever become sufficiently popular that they are used by more than a few people, but professional programmers may use dozens of languages in a career.

Most programming languages are not standardized by an international (or national) standard, even widely used ones, such as Perl or Standard ML (despite the name). Notable standardized programming languages include ALGOL, C, C++, JavaScript (under the name ECMAScript), Smalltalk, Prolog, Common Lisp, Scheme (IEEE standard), Ada, Fortran, COBOL, SQL and XQuery.

General comparison

The following table compares general and technical information for a selection of commonly used programming languages. See the individual languages' articles for further information. Please note that the following table may be missing some information.

Language Intended use Imperative Object-oriented Functional Procedural Generic Reflective Event-driven Other paradigm(s) Standardized?
1C:Enterprise Application, RAD,  business, general, web, mobile Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Object-based,

Prototype-based programming

 No
ActionScript 3.0 Application, client-side, web Yes Yes Yes Yes 1996, ECMA
Ada Application, embedded, realtime, system Yes Yes[2] Yes[3] Yes[4] concurrent,[5] distributed,[6] 1983, 2005, 2012, ANSI, ISO, GOST 27831-88[7]
Aldor Highly domain-specific, symbolic computing Yes Yes Yes No
ALGOL 58 Application Yes No
ALGOL 60 Application Yes 1960, IFIP WG 2.1, ISO[8]
ALGOL 68 Application Yes concurrent 1968, IFIP WG 2.1, GOST 27974-88,[9]
Ateji PX Parallel application Yes pi calculus No
APL Application, data processing Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes array-oriented, tacit 1989, ISO
Assembly language General Yes any, syntax is usually highly specific, related to the target processor IEEE 694-1985[10]
AutoHotkey GUI automation (macros), highly domain-specific Yes Yes[11] Yes Yes No
AutoIt GUI automation (macros), highly domain-specific Yes Yes Yes No
Ballerina Integration, agile, server-side, general Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes concurrent, transactional, statically and strongly typed programming, diagrammatic / visual programming 2018 De facto standard via Ballerina Language Specification[12]
Bash Shell, scripting Yes Yes No, but optionally POSIX.2 [13]
BASIC Application, education Yes Yes 1983, ANSI, ISO, ECMA
BeanShell Application, scripting Yes Yes Yes Yes In progress, JCP[14]
BLISS System Yes No
BlitzMax Application, game Yes Yes Yes Yes No
Boo Application, game scripting Yes No
Bro domain-specific, application Yes Yes No
C Application, system,[15] general purpose, low-level operations Yes Yes Yes 1989, ANSI C89, ISO C90, ISO C99, ISO C11, ISO C18[16]
C++ Application, system Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes 1998. ISO/IEC 2003, ISO/IEC 2011,ISO/IEC 2014,ISO/IEC 2017[17]
C# Application, RAD, business, client-side, general, server-side, web Yes Yes Yes[18] Yes Yes Yes Yes structured, concurrent 2000, ECMA, ISO[19]
Clarion General, business, web Yes Yes Yes[20] Unknown
Clean General Yes Yes No
Clojure General Yes concurrent No
CLU General Yes Yes Yes Yes No
COBOL Application, business Yes Yes Yes ANSI X3.23 1968, 1974, 1985; ISO/IEC 1989:1985, 2002, 2014
Cobra Application, business, general, web Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No
ColdFusion (CFML) Web Yes Yes No
Common Lisp General Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes extensible syntax, Array-oriented, syntactic macros, multiple dispatch, concurrent 1994, ANSI
COMAL 80 Education Yes Yes No
Crystal General purpose Yes Yes[21] Yes Yes alpha stage[22] No
Curry Application Yes Yes lazy evaluation, non-determinism De facto standard via Curry Language Report
Cython Application, general, numerical computing Yes Yes Yes Yes aspect-oriented No
D Application, system Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes generative, concurrent No
Dart Application, web, server-side, mobile, IoT Yes Yes Yes structured Ecma-408 standard
Dylan Application Yes Yes No
Eiffel General, application, business, client-side, server-side, web (EWF) Yes Yes Yes[23][24] Yes Yes Erl-G Yes Agents distributed SCOOP, Void-safe 2005, ECMA, ISO[25]
Elixir Application, distributed Yes Yes concurrent, distributed No
Erlang Application, distributed Yes Yes concurrent, distributed No
Euphoria Application Yes Yes No
Factor General Yes can be viewed as Yes Yes stack-oriented No
FP Yes No
F# Application Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No
Forth General Yes can be viewed as stack-oriented 1994, ANSI
Fortran Application, numerical computing Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes array-based, vectorized, concurrent, native distributed/shared-memory parallelism 1966, ANSI 66, ANSI 77, MIL-STD-1753, ISO 90, ISO 95, ISO 2003, ISO/IEC 1539-1:2010 (2008), ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG5 N2145 (2018)
FreeBASIC Application, numerical computing Yes Yes Yes Yes No
Gambas Application Yes Yes Yes No
Game Maker Language Application, games Yes Yes Yes No
GLBasic Application, games Yes Yes Yes simple object-oriented No
Go Application, web, server-side Yes [26] Yes Yes Yes concurrent De facto standard via Go Language Specification
Gosu Application, general, scripting, web Yes Yes Yes Yes No
GraphTalk Application Yes logic No
Groovy Application, general, scripting, web Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes meta-programming In progress, JCP[27]
Harbour Application, business, data processing, general, web Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes declarative No
Haskell Application Yes Yes lazy evaluation 2010, Haskell 2010[28]
Haxe Application, general, web Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No
HyperNext Application, education Yes Yes weakly typed No
HyperTalk Application, RAD, general Yes Yes weakly typed Unknown
Io Application, host-driven scripting Yes Yes No
IPL General Yes Unknown
ISLISP General Yes Yes Yes Yes 1997, ISO
J Data processing array-oriented, function-level, tacit No
JADE Application, distributed Yes Yes No
Java Application, business, client-side, general, mobile development, server-side, web Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes concurrent De facto standard via Java Language Specification
JavaScript Client-side, server-side, web Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes prototype-based 1997, ECMA
Joy Research Yes stack-oriented No
Julia General, technical computing Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes multiple dispatch, meta, scalar and array-oriented, parallel, concurrent, distributed ("cloud") No
K Data processing, business array-oriented, tacit Unknown
Kotlin Application, mobile development, server-side, client-side, web Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes[29] Yes No
Ksh Shell, scripting Yes Yes Yes several variants, custom programmable, dynamic loadable modules 1992, POSIX.2 [30]
LabVIEW (G) Application, industrial instrumentation-automation Yes Yes Yes Yes dataflow, visual No
Lisp General Yes Unknown
LiveCode Application, RAD, general Yes Yes weakly typed No
Logtalk Artificial intelligence, application Yes Yes Yes logic No
LSL Virtual worlds content scripting and animation Yes Yes Yes Scripts exist in in-world objects Yes[31]
Lua Application, embedded scripting Yes Yes[32] Yes Yes Yes aspect-oriented No[33]
Maple Symbolic computation, numerical computing Yes Yes Yes Yes distributed No
Mathematica Symbolic language Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes logic, distributed No
MATLAB Highly domain-specific, numerical computing Yes Yes Yes No
Modula-2 Application, system Yes Yes 1996, ISO[34]
Modula-3 Application Yes Yes Yes No
MUMPS (M) Application, databases Yes Yes concurrent, multi-user, NoSQL, transaction processing 1977, ANSI
Nim Application, general, web, scripting, system Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes multiple dispatch, Concurrent, meta No
Oberon Application, system Yes Yes No
Object Pascal Application, general, mobile app, web Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes structured No
Objective-C Application, general Yes Yes Yes Yes concurrent No
OCaml Application, general Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No
Occam General Yes Yes concurrent, process-oriented No
Opa Web applications Yes Yes Yes distributed No
OpenLisp General, Embedded Lisp Engine Yes Yes Yes Yes Supersedes ISLISP, ISO
Oxygene Application Yes Yes Yes No
Oz-Mozart Application, distribution, education Yes Yes Yes concurrent, logic No
Pascal Application, education Yes Yes 1983, ISO[35]
Perl Application, scripting, text processing, Web Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No
PHP Server-side, web application, web Yes Yes[36] Yes[37] Yes Yes "De facto" standard via language specification and Requests for Comments (RFCs)
PL/I Application Yes Yes Yes 1969, ECMA-50 (1976)
Plus Application, system development Yes Yes No
PostScript Graphics, page description Yes Yes

concatenative, stack-oriented

 Yes, as the PostScript Reference Manual[38]
PowerShell Administration, application, general, scripting Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes pipeline No
Prolog Application, artificial intelligence Yes Yes Yes logic, declarative 1995, ISO/IEC 13211-1:1995, TC1 2007, TC2 2012, TC3 2017
PureBasic Application Yes No
Python Application, general, web, scripting, artificial intelligence, scientific computing Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes aspect-oriented "De facto" standard via Python Enhancement Proposals (PEPs)
R Application, statistics Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No
Racket Education, general, scripting Yes Yes Yes Yes modular, logic, meta No
Raku Scripting, text processing, glue Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes aspect-oriented, array, lazy evaluation, multiple dispatch, metaprogramming Yes
REALbasic Application Yes Unknown
Rebol Distributed Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes dialected No
REXX Scripting Yes Yes (NetRexx and Object REXX dialects) No Yes No No 1996 (ANSI X3.274-1996)
RPG Application, system Yes Yes No
Ruby Application, scripting, web Yes Yes Yes Yes aspect-oriented 2011(JIS X 3017), 2012(ISO/IEC 30170)
Rust Application, system Yes Yes[39] Yes Yes Yes Yes concurrent No
S Application, statistics Yes Yes Yes Yes No
S-Lang Application, numerical, scripting Yes Yes No
Scala Application, distributed, web Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes De facto standard via Scala Language Specification (SLS)
Scheme Education, general Yes extensible syntax 1998, R6RS
Seed7 Application, general, scripting, web Yes Yes Yes Yes multi-paradigm, extensible, structured No
Simula Education, general Yes Yes Yes discrete event simulation, multi-threaded (quasi-parallel) program execution 1968
Small Basic Application, education, games Yes Yes component-oriented No
Smalltalk Application, general, business, artificial intelligence, education, web Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes concurrent, declarative 1998, [ANSI
SNOBOL Text processing Unknown
Standard ML Application Yes Yes Yes 1997, SML '97[40]
Swift Application, general Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes concurrent, declarative, protocol-oriented No
Tcl Application, scripting, web Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No
Visual Basic Application, RAD, education, business, general, (Includes VBA), office automation Yes Yes Yes Yes component-oriented No
Visual Basic .NET Application, RAD, education, web, business, general Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes structured, concurrent No
Visual FoxPro Application Yes data-centric, logic No
Visual Prolog Application Yes Yes Yes Yes declarative, logic No
Wolfram Language Symbolic language Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes logic, distributed No
XL Yes Yes concept programming No
Xojo Application, RAD, general, web Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No
XPath/XQuery Databases, data processing, scripting Yes tree-oriented W3C 1999 XPath 1, 2010 XQuery 1, 2014 XPath/XQuery 3.0
Zsh Shell, scripting Yes Yes loadable modules No

Type systems
Main article: Comparison of programming languages by type system

Failsafe I/O and system calls

Most programming languages will print an error message or throw an exception if an input/output operation or other system call (e.g., chmod, kill) fails, unless the programmer has explicitly arranged for different handling of these events. Thus, these languages fail safely in this regard.

Some (mostly older) languages require that the programmer explicitly add checks for these kinds of errors. Psychologically, different cognitive biases (e.g., optimism bias) may affect novice and experts alike and these omissions can lead to erroneous behavior.

Language Failsafe I/O
1C:Enterprise Yes
Ada Yes (exceptions)
ALGOL Yes (exceptions or return value depending on function)
AutoHotkey No (global ErrorLevel must be explicitly checked)
Bash Optional[FSIO 1]
Ballerina Yes
Bro Yes
C No[FSIO 2]
C++ Some (STL iostreams throw on failure but C APIs like stdio or POSIX do not)[FSIO 2]
C# Yes
COBOL No
Common Lisp Yes ("conditions and restarts" system)
Curry Yes
D Yes (throwing on failure) [FSIO 3]
Eiffel No – It actually depends on the library and it is not defined by the language
Erlang Yes
Fortran Yes
GLBasic No – Will generally cause program to crash
Go Yes (unless result explicitly ignored)
Gosu Yes
Harbour Yes
Haskell Yes
ISLISP Yes
Java Yes
Julia Yes
Kotlin Yes
LabVIEW Yes
Lua No (some functions do not warn or throw exceptions)
Mathematica Yes
Object Pascal Some
Objective-C Yes (exceptions)
OCaml Yes (exceptions)
OpenLisp Yes
Perl No[FSIO 4]
PHP Yes
Python Yes
Raku Yes
Rebol Yes
Rexx Yes (with optional signal on… trap handling)
RPG No
Ruby Yes
Rust Yes (unless result explicitly ignored)
S Unknown
Smalltalk Yes
Scala Yes[FSIO 5]
Standard ML Yes
Swift ≥ 2.0 Yes (exceptions)
Tcl Yes
Visual Basic Yes
Visual Basic .NET Yes
Visual Prolog Yes
Wolfram Language Yes
Xojo Yes
XPath/XQuery Yes (exceptions)
Language Failsafe I/O
  1. set -e enables termination if any unchecked exit status is nonzero.
  2. gcc can warn on unchecked errno. Newer versions of Visual Studio usually throw exceptions on failed I/O when using stdio.
  3. https://dlang.org/phobos/std_stdio.html
  4. Considerable error checking can be enabled optionally, but by default Perl is not failsafe.
  5. Scala runs on the Java Virtual Machine from which it inherits the runtime exception handling.

Expressiveness
LanguageStatements ratio[41] Lines ratio[42]
C11
C++2.51
Fortran20.8
Java2.51.5
Perl66
Smalltalk66.25
Python66.5

The literature on programming languages contains an abundance of informal claims about their relative expressive power, but there is no framework for formalizing such statements nor for deriving interesting consequences.[43] This table provides two measures of expressiveness from two different sources. An additional measure of expressiveness, in GZip bytes, can be found on the Computer Language Benchmarks Game.[44]

Benchmarks

Benchmarks are designed to mimic a particular type of workload on a component or system. The computer programs used for compiling some of the benchmark data in this section may not have been fully optimized, and the relevance of the data is disputed. The most accurate benchmarks are those that are customized to your particular situation. Other people's benchmark data may have some value to others, but proper interpretation brings many challenges. The Computer Language Benchmarks Game site warns against over-generalizing from benchmark data, but contains a large number of micro-benchmarks of reader-contributed code snippets, with an interface that generates various charts and tables comparing specific programming languages and types of tests.[45]

Timeline of specific language comparisons
  • 1974 – Comparative Notes on Algol 68 and PL/I[46] – S. H. Valentine – November 1974
  • 1976 – Evaluation of ALGOL 68, JOVIAL J3B, Pascal, Simula 67, and TACPOL Versus TINMAN – Requirements for a Common High Order Programming Language.
  • 1977 – A comparison of PASCAL and ALGOL 68[47] – Andrew S. Tanenbaum – June 1977.
  • 1993 – Five Little Languages and How They Grew – BLISS, Pascal, ALGOL 68, BCPL & C – Dennis M. Ritchie – April 1993.
  • 2009 – On Go – oh, go on – How well will Google's Go stand up against Brand X programming language? – David Given – November 2009
gollark: I agree, they're mostly stupid.
gollark: Oh, the plants are bad, the data structures work.
gollark: https://rust-unofficial.github.io/too-many-lists/
gollark: Trees are fine, though.
gollark: Unsafely!

See also
To display all pages, subcategories and images click on the "►":
▼ Lists of programming languages‎ (19 P)
  List of programming languages
  List of programming languages by type
  Lists of programming languages
  List of programming languages for artificial intelligence
  List of audio programming languages
  List of BASIC dialects
  List of C-family programming languages
  List of CLI languages
  List of concurrent and parallel programming languages
  List of educational programming languages
  Generational list of programming languages
  List of JVM languages
  List of Lisp-family programming languages
  Non-English-based programming languages
  List of object-oriented programming languages
  Comparison of open-source programming language licensing
  List of reflective programming languages and platforms
  Timeline of programming languages
  Unisys MCP programming languages

References
  1. As of May 2006 Diarmuid Pigott's Encyclopedia of Computer Languages Archived 2011-02-20 at the Wayback Machine hosted at Murdoch University, Australia lists 8512 computer languages.
  2. Ada Reference Manual, ISO/IEC 8652:2005(E) Ed. 3, 3.9 Tagged Types and Type Extensions
  3. Ada Reference Manual, ISO/IEC 8652:2005(E) Ed. 3, Section 6: Subprograms
  4. Ada Reference Manual, ISO/IEC 8652:2005(E) Ed. 3, Section 12: Generic Units
  5. Ada Reference Manual, ISO/IEC 8652:2005(E) Ed. 3, Section 9: Tasks and Synchronization
  6. Ada Reference Manual, ISO/IEC 8652:2005(E) Ed. 3 Annex E: Distributed Systems
  7. "Vak.ru" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2017-03-30. Retrieved 2008-08-09.
  8. ISO 1538:1984
  9. "Vak.ru" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2017-03-24. Retrieved 2008-08-09.
  10. IEEE 694-1985
  11. AutoHotkey object protocol and concepts
  12. "Ballerina Language Specification" (PDF). WSO2. 2018-05-01. Retrieved 2018-05-03.
  13. POSIX.2, Shell and Utilities, Command Interpreter (IEEE Std 1003.2-1992.)
  14. JSR 274
  15. bell-labs.com
  16. ANSI C89, ISO/IEC 9899:1990, 1999, 2011, 2018
  17. ISO/IEC 14882:1998, 2003, 2011, 2014, 2017
  18. Codeproject.com: Functional Programming in C# 3.0 using Lambda Expression
  19. ECMA-334; ISO/IEC 23270:2006
  20. Softvelocity.com
  21. https://github.com/crystal-lang/crystal#why
  22. https://github.com/crystal-lang/crystal#status
  23. Basic Eiffel language mechanisms
  24. Closure (computer programming)
  25. ECMA-367; ISO/IEC 25436:2006
  26. The Go Programming Language (FAQ)
  27. JSR 241
  28. "The Haskell 2010 Language Report". Retrieved 2011-12-07. Most Haskell implementations extend the Haskell 2010 standard.
  29. "M8 is out!". As a first peek into the future reflective capabilities of Kotlin, you can now access properties as first-class objects in Kotlin
  30. POSIX.2, Shell and Utilities, Command Interpreter (IEEE Std 1003.2-1992.)
  31. "De facto" reference is the Second_Life implementation of LSL. Halcyon (Inworldz) and Open Sims propose compatible implementations with additionnal functions
  32. Lua doesn't have explicit "object" type (more general type of "table" is used for object definition), but does have explicit syntax for object method calling
  33. Version releases are accompanied with a definitive Lua Reference Manual showing full syntax and semantics; a reference implementation, and a test suite. These are used to generate other Lua VM implementations and compilers such as Kahlua and LLVM-Lua.
  34. ISO/IEC 10514-1:1996
  35. ISO 7185
  36. PHP Manual, Chapter 19. Classes and Objects (PHP 5),
  37. PHP Manual, Chapter 17. Functions
  38. "PostScript Language Reference Manual" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2017-02-18. Retrieved 2017-02-18.
  39. Is Rust an Object-Oriented Programming Language?
  40. SMLNJ.org
  41. Data from Code Complete. p. 100. The Statements ratio column "shows typical ratios of source statements in several high-level languages to the equivalent code in C. A higher ratio means that each line of code in the language listed accomplishes more than does each line of code in C.
  42. The ratio of line count tests won by each language to the number won by C when using the Compare to feature at Jon McLoone (November 14, 2012). "Code Length Measured in 14 Languages". Archived from the original on 2012-11-19. C gcc was used for C, C++ g++ was used for C++, FORTRAN G95 was used for FORTRAN, Java JDK Server was used for Java, and Smalltalk GST was used for Smalltalk.
  43. Felleisen, Matthias. On the Expressive Power of Programming Languages. ESOP '90 3rd European Symposium on Programming. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.51.4656.
  44. "How programs are measured | Computer Language Benchmarks Game". benchmarksgame-team.pages.debian.net/benchmarksgame. Retrieved 2018-05-29.
  45. "The Ultimate Benchmark | The Computer Language Benchmarks Game". benchmarksgame-team.pages.debian.net/benchmarksgame. Retrieved 2018-05-29.
  46. Valentine, S. H. (November 1974). "Comparative Notes on Algol 68 and PL/I". The Computer Journal. 17 (4): 325–331. doi:10.1093/comjnl/17.4.325.
  47. http://dare.ubvu.vu.nl/bitstream/1871/2609/1/11054.pdf


Further reading
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