Comparison of programming languages Computer Informatics 464 pasar.pts-ptn.net

Programming language comparisons
General comparison Basic syntax Basic instructions Arrays Associative arrays String operations String functions List comprehension Object-oriented programming Object-oriented constructors Database access
Evaluation strategy List of "Hello World" programs
ALGOL 58's influence on ALGOL 60 ALGOL 60: Comparisons with other languages Comparison of ALGOL 68 and C++ ALGOL 68: Comparisons with other languages Compatibility of C and C++ Comparison of Pascal and Borland Delphi Comparison of Object Pascal and C Comparison of Pascal and C Comparison of Java and C++ Comparison of C# and Java Comparison of C# and Visual Basic .NET Comparison of Visual Basic and Visual Basic .NET
Web application frameworks Comparison of the Java and .NET platforms

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.

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.

1 General comparison
2 Type systems
3 Failsafe I/O and system calls
4 Expressiveness
5 Benchmarks
6 Timeline of specific language comparisons
7 See also
8 References
9 Further reading
10 External links

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	Paradigm(s)	Standardized?
ActionScript 3.0	Application, client-side, Web	event-driven, imperative, object-oriented	1996, ECMA
Ada	Application, embedded, realtime, system	concurrent,^[2] distributed,^[3] generic,^[4] imperative object-oriented,^[5] procedural,^[6]	1983, 2005, 2012, ANSI, ISO, GOST 27831-88^[7]
Aldor	Highly domain-specific, symbolic computing	imperative, functional, object-oriented	No
ALGOL 58	Application	imperative	No
ALGOL 60	Application	imperative	1960, IFIP WG 2.1, ISO^[8]
ALGOL 68	Application	concurrent, imperative	1968, IFIP WG 2.1, GOST 27974-88,^[9]
Ateji PX	Parallel application	object-oriented, pi calculus	No
APL	Application, data processing	array-oriented, tacit	1989, ISO
Assembly language	General	any, imperative, syntax is usually highly specific, related to the target processor	No
AutoHotkey	GUI automation (macros), highly domain-specific	imperative	No
AutoIt	GUI automation (macros), highly domain-specific	event-driven, imperative, procedural	No
BASIC	Application, education	imperative, procedural	1983, ANSI, ISO
BBj	Application, business, Web	object-oriented, procedural	No
BeanShell	Application, scripting	functional, imperative, object-oriented, reflective	In progress, JCP^[10]
BLISS	System	procedural	No
BlitzMax	Application, game	imperative, object-oriented, procedural	No
Boo	Application		No
C	System^[11]	imperative, procedural	1989, ANSI C89, ISO C90, ISO C99, ISO C11^[12]
C++	Application, system	generic, imperative, object-oriented, procedural, functional	1998, ISO/IEC 1998, ISO/IEC 2003, ISO/IEC 2011^[13]
C#	Application, business, client-side, general, server-side, Web, Robotics	structured, functional,^[14] generic, imperative, object-oriented, reflective, concurrent, event-driven	2000, ECMA, ISO^[15]
Clarion	General, business, Web	functional,^[16] imperative, object-oriented	Unknown
Clean	General	functional, generic	No
Clojure	General	concurrent, functional	No
CLU	General	generic, imperative, object-oriented, procedural	No
COBOL	Application, business	imperative, object-oriented	2002 (ISO/IEC 1989)
Cobra	Application, business, general, Web	functional, generic, imperative, object-oriented, reflective	No
ColdFusion (CFML)	Web	object-oriented, procedural	No
Common Lisp	General	functional, generic, imperative, object-oriented, reflective	1994, ANSI
COMAL 80	Education	imperative, procedural	No
Crystal 1.0.0	Education	functional, imperative, procedural	No
Cython	Application, general, numerical computing	aspect-oriented, functional, imperative, object-oriented, reflective	No
D	Application, system	generic, generative, imperative, object-oriented, functional, concurrent	No
Dart	Application, Web	imperative, structured, object-oriented	No
Dylan	Application	functional, object-oriented	No
DYL-280	Application, system	imperative, procedural	No
Eiffel	Application	generic, imperative, object-oriented	2005, ECMA, ISO^[17]
Erlang	Application, distributed, telecom	concurrent, distributed, functional	No
Euphoria	Application. Since the interpreter is shared for system and application code, system is not an intended use because application crashes would affect the whole system.	procedural, reflective	No
Factor		stack-oriented	No
Falcon	General, Application	procedural, functional, object oriented, prototype OOP, message oriented, tabular programming	No
FP		functional	No
F#	Application	functional, generic, imperative, object-oriented	No
Forth	General	imperative, stack-oriented	1994, ANSI
Fortran	Application, numerical computing	generic, imperative, object-oriented, procedural	1966, ANSI 66, ANSI 77, MIL-STD-1753, ISO 90, ISO 95, ISO 2003
G2	Application, inference, expert system	common graphical development and runtime environment, event-driven, imperative, object-oriented	No
Gambas	Application	event-driven, imperative, object-oriented	No
Game Maker Language	Application, games	event-driven, imperative, object-oriented	No
GLBasic	Application, games	imperative, procedural, simple object-oriented	No
Go	Application, system	concurrent, imperative	No
Gosu	Application, general, scripting, Web	generic, imperative, object-oriented, reflective	No
GraphTalk	Application	logic, object-oriented	No
Groovy	Application, Web	aspect-oriented, imperative, object-oriented, functional	In progress, JCP^[18]
Harbour	Application, business, data processing, general, Web	declarative, functional, generic, imperative, object-oriented, procedural, reflective	No
Haskell	Application	functional, generic, lazy evaluation	2010, Haskell 2010^[19]
Haxe	Application, general, Web	imperative, object-oriented, functional, generic, reflective	No
HyperNext	Application, education	event-driven, procedural, weakly typed	No
Io	Application, host-driven scripting	imperative, object-oriented	No
ISLISP	General	functional, generic, imperative, object-oriented	1997, ISO
J	Data processing	array-oriented, function-level, tacit	No
JADE	Application, distributed	imperative, object-oriented	No
Java	Application, business, client-side, general, server-side, Web	generic, imperative, object-oriented, reflective	De facto standard via Java Language Specification
JavaScript	Client-side, Web	functional, imperative, prototype-based, reflective	1997, ECMA
Joy	Research	functional, stack-oriented	No
K	Data processing, business	array-oriented, tacit	Unknown
LabVIEW (G)	Application, industrial instrumentation-automation	dataflow, visual	No
Lisp	General	functional	Unknown
Logtalk	Artificial intelligence, application	event-driven, logic, object-oriented, reflective	No
Lua	Application, embedded scripting	aspect-oriented, functional, imperative, object-oriented, procedural, reflective	No^[20]
Mathematica	Symbolic language	functional, procedural, imperative, logic, distributed, object-oriented	No
MATLAB	Highly domain-specific, numerical computing	imperative, object-oriented, procedural	No
Modula-2	Application, system	generic, imperative	1996, ISO^[21]
Modula-3	Application	generic, imperative, object-oriented	No
Oberon	Application, system	imperative, object-oriented	No
Objective-C	Application	imperative, object-oriented, reflective	No^[22]
OCaml	Application	functional, generic, imperative, object-oriented	No
Object Pascal (Delphi)	Application, business, client-side, general, server-side, Web	aspect-oriented,^[23] event-driven, functional, generic, imperative, object-oriented, procedural, reflective	No
Occam	General	concurrent, imperative, procedural, process-oriented	No
Opa	Web applications	functional, generic, imperative, distributed	No
Oxygene	Application	generic, imperative, object-oriented	No
Oz	Application, distribution, education	concurrent, functional, imperative, logic, object-oriented	No
Pascal	Application, education	imperative, procedural	1983, ISO^[24]
Pawn	Embedded, host-driven scripting	imperative	No
Perl	Application, scripting, text processing, Web	functional, generic, imperative, object-oriented, procedural, reflective	No
PHP	Server-side, Web Application, Web	imperative, object-oriented,^[25] procedural,^[26] reflective	No
PL/I	Application	imperative, object-oriented, procedural	1969
Plus	Application, system development	imperative, procedural	No
Prolog	Application, artificial intelligence	logic	1995, ISO
PureBasic	Application	procedural	No
Python	Application, general, Web, scripting	aspect-oriented, functional, imperative, object-oriented, reflective	De facto standard via Python Enhancement Proposals (PEP)s.
Racket	Education, general, scripting	functional, procedural, modular, object-oriented, logic, reflective, meta	No
REALbasic	Application	procedural	Unknown
REBOL	Distributed	dialected, functional, imperative, object-oriented	No
RPG (IBM)	Application, system	imperative, procedural	No
Ruby	Application, scripting, Web	aspect-oriented, functional, imperative, object-oriented, reflective	2011(JIS X 3017), 2012(ISO/IEC 30170)
Rust	Application, system	concurrent, functional, generic, imperative, object-oriented, reflective	No
S	Application, statistics	functional, imperative, object-oriented, procedural	No
S-Lang	Application, numerical, scripting	imperative, procedural	No
Scala	Application, distributed, Web	functional, generic, imperative, object-oriented	De facto standard via Scala Language Specification (SLS)
Scheme	Education, general	functional	1998, R⁶RS
Simula	Education, general	discrete event simulation, event-driven, imperative, multi-threaded (quasi-parallel) program execution, object-oriented	1968
Small Basic	Application, education, games	component-oriented, event-driven, imperative	No
Smalltalk	Application, education	concurrent, declarative, event-driven, object-oriented, reflective	1998, ANSI
SNOBOL	Text processing		Unknown
Standard ML	Application	functional, generic, imperative	1997, SML '97^[27]
Tcl	Application, scripting, Web	event-driven, imperative, procedural, reflective	No
Visual Basic	Application, education	component-oriented, event-driven, imperative	No
Visual Basic .NET	Application, education, Web	event-driven, imperative, object-oriented	No
Visual Prolog	Application	declarative, event-driven, functional, imperative, logic, object-oriented	No
Windows PowerShell	Administration	functional, imperative, object-oriented, pipeline, reflective	No
XL		concept programming, imperative, object-oriented	No
Language	Intended use	Paradigm(s)	Standardized?

Type systems

Brief definitions

Compatibility among composite types describes the behavior of functions applied to data typed similarly to its intended type. Name-based compatibility means that functions work only on data of its intended type and declared subtypes. Property-based compatibility means that functions work on any data that has the same properties as its intended type.
Type checking determines whether and when types are verified. Static checking occurs at compile-time. Dynamic checking occurs at run-time.

Language	Type strength	Type safety	Type expression	Type compatibility among composites	Type checking
ActionScript 3.0	strong	safe	implicit with optional explicit typing		static
Ada	strong	safe^{[TS 1]}	explicit	name-based	partially dynamic^{[TS 2]}
Aldor	strong	unsafe	implicit		static
ALGOL 58	strong	safe	explicit		static
ALGOL 60	strong	safe	explicit		static
ALGOL 68	strong	safe	explicit	property-based	static
APL	strong	safe			dynamic
AutoHotkey	none
Ateji PX	strong	safe	explicit	name-based	static
BASIC	varies by dialect
BLISS	none	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a
BeanShell	strong	safe		name-based	dynamic
Boo	strong	safe	implicit with optional explicit typing		static with optional dynamic typing
C	weak	unsafe	explicit	name-based	static
C++ (ISO/IEC 14882)	strong	unsafe	explicit	name-based	static^{[TS 3]}
C#	strong	safe^{[TS 4]}	implicit with optional explicit typing	name-based	static^{[TS 5]}
Clean	strong	safe	implicit		static
Clojure	strong	safe	implicit with optional explicit typing		dynamic
COBOL	strong				static
ColdFusion (CFML)	strong	safe	implicit		dynamic
Common Lisp	strong	safe	implicit with optional explicit typing		dynamic
Curl	strong	safe		name-based
Cython	strong	safe	implicit with optional explicit typing	name-based (extension types) and property-based (Python)	dynamic with optional static typing
D	strong	unsafe^{[TS 6]}	explicit	name-based	static
Dylan	strong	safe			dynamic
Eiffel	strong	safe		name-based	static
Erlang	strong	safe	implicit		dynamic
Euphoria	strong	safe	explicit, implicit with objects	name-based	static, dynamic with objects
F#	strong	safe	implicit	name-based	static
Falcon	strong	safe	implicit	property-based	dynamic
Forth	none	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a
Fortran	strong	safe	explicit^{[TS 7]}	name-based	static
Gambas	strong	safe	explicit	name-based
GLBasic	strong	safe	explicit. Non-explicit declarations available through project options	name-based	static
Go^[28]	strong	safe	implicit with optional explicit typing	property-based	static
Gosu	strong	safe	partially implicit (local type inference)	name-based (subclassing) and property-based (structural)	static
GraphTalk	weak
Groovy	strong	safe	implicit with optional explicit typing		dynamic with optional static typing
Harbour	strong	safe	implicit with optional explicit typing		dynamic
Haskell	strong	safe	implicit with optional explicit typing	property-based	static
Haxe	strong	safe	implicit with optional explicit typing	name-based (subclassing) and property-based (structural)	static with optional dynamic typing
Io	strong	safe	implicit		dynamic
ISLISP	strong	safe			dynamic
J	strong	safe			dynamic
Java	strong	safe^[29]	explicit	name-based	static
JavaScript	weak		implicit		dynamic
Joy	strong	safe			dynamic
Lua	weak	safe	implicit		dynamic
Mathematica	strong				dynamic
MATLAB M-code					dynamic
Modula-2	strong	unsafe^{[TS 6]}	explicit	name-based	static
Modula-3	strong	unsafe^{[TS 6]}	explicit	property-based	static
Oberon	strong	safe	explicit	name-based	static and partially dynamic^{[TS 8]}
Objective-C	weak	safe	explicit	name-based (subclassing) and property-based (protocols)	dynamic with optional static typing^[30]
OCaml	strong	safe	implicit with optional explicit typing	property-based	static
Object Pascal (Delphi)	strong	safe	explicit	name-based	static
Opa	strong	safe	implicit with optional explicit typing	property-based	static
Oxygene	strong	unsafe	implicit		static
Oz	strong	safe	implicit	property-based	dynamic
Pascal	strong	unsafe^{[TS 6]}	explicit	name-based	static
Perl 5	weak		implicit		dynamic
Perl 6			partially implicit^{[TS 9]}		dynamic with optional static typing
PHP	weak		implicit		dynamic
Plus	strong	safe	explicit	property-based	static, dynamic (optional)
Prolog	strong				dynamic
Pure					dynamic
Python	strong	safe	implicit	property-based	dynamic
REBOL	strong	safe	implicit		dynamic
RPG (IBM)	strong	unsafe			static
Ruby	strong	safe	implicit	property-based	dynamic
Rust	strong	safe	implicit with optional explicit typing		static with optional dynamic typing
S	strong				dynamic
S-Lang	strong	safe	implicit		dynamic
Scala	strong	safe	partially implicit (local type inference)	name-based (subclassing) and property-based (structural)	static
Scheme	strong		implicit		dynamic (latent)
Simula	strong	safe			static^{[TS 10]}
Smalltalk	strong	safe	implicit		dynamic
Standard ML	strong	safe	implicit with optional explicit typing	property-based	static
Tcl					dynamic
Visual Basic	strong	safe	implicit with optional explicit typing	name-based	static
Visual Basic .NET	strong	unsafe^{[TS 6]}	explicit		static
Visual Prolog	strong	safe	partially implicit	name-based	static
Windows PowerShell	strong	safe	implicit		dynamic
XL	strong	safe		name-based	static
Language	Type strength	Type safety	Type expression	Type compatibility among composites	Type checking

^ Unsafe operations are well isolated by a "Unchecked_" prefix.
^ Dynamic type checking is used when type safety can not be determined statically, i.e., for tagged types (type extension / inheritance), numeric ranges and array bounds.
^ with optional dynamic type casting (see dynamic_cast)
^ Safe, but supports unsafe code through an explicit declaration
^ with optional dynamic type (see dynamic member lookup)
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e It is almost safe, unsafe features are not commonly used.
^ Optionally, typing can be explicitly implied by the first letter of the identifier (known as implicit typing within the Fortran community).
^ dynamic checking of type extensions i.e. inherited types
^ explicit for static types
^ optional for formal and virtual procedures

Failsafe I/O and system calls

Most programming languages will print an error message and/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. It is common for novice programmers to forget to add these checks, and even experts occasionally do so—these omissions can lead to erroneous behavior.

Language	Failsafe I/O
Ada	Yes (exceptions)
AutoHotkey	No (global ErrorLevel must be explicitly checked)
C	No^{[FSIO 1]}
C++	No^{[FSIO 2]}
C#	Yes
Common Lisp	Yes
D	Yes^{[citation needed]}
Eiffel	Yes - It actually depends on the library and it is not defined by the language
Erlang	Yes
Falcon	Yes
Fortran	Yes
GLBasic	No - Will generally cause program to crash
Go	No
Gosu	Yes
Harbour	Yes
Haskell	Yes
ISLISP	Yes
Java	Yes
Lua	No (some functions do not warn or throw exceptions)
Mathematica	Yes
Object Pascal (Delphi)	Some
Objective-C	Yes (exceptions)
OCaml	Yes (exceptions)
Perl	No^{[FSIO 3]}
PHP	Yes
Python	Yes
REBOL	Yes
Ruby	Yes
Rust	Yes
S	Unknown
Scala	Yes^[31]
Standard ML	Yes^{[citation needed]}
Tcl	Yes
Visual Basic	Yes
Visual Prolog	Yes
Language	Failsafe I/O

^ gcc can warn on unchecked error status. Newer versions of Visual Studio usually throw exceptions on failed I/O when using stdio.
^ g++ can warn on unchecked error status. Newer versions of Visual Studio usually throw exceptions on failed I/O when using stdio.
^ Considerable error checking can be enabled optionally, but by default Perl is not failsafe.

Expressiveness

Language	Statements ratio^[32]	Lines ratio^[33]
C	1	1
C++	2.5	1
Fortran	2	0.8
Java	2.5	1.5
Perl	6	6
Smalltalk	6	6.25
Python	6	6.5

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.^[34] 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.^[35]

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. See this page about over-generalizing from benchmark data. The Computer Language Benchmarks Game site 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.

Timeline of specific language comparisons

1973 - Comparative Notes on Algol 68 and PL/I - S. H. Valentine - February 1973
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[1] - 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

References

^ As of May 2006 Diarmuid Pigott's Encyclopedia of Computer Languages hosted at Murdoch University, Australia lists 8512 computer languages.
^ Ada Reference Manual, ISO/IEC 8652:2005(E) Ed. 3, Section 9: Tasks and Synchronization
^ Ada Reference Manual, ISO/IEC 8652:2005(E) Ed. 3 Annex E: Distributed Systems
^ Ada Reference Manual, ISO/IEC 8652:2005(E) Ed. 3, Section 12: Generic Units
^ Ada Reference Manual, ISO/IEC 8652:2005(E) Ed. 3, 3.9 Tagged Types and Type Extensions
^ Ada Reference Manual, ISO/IEC 8652:2005(E) Ed. 3, Section 6: Subprograms
^ Vak.ru
^ ISO 1538:1984
^ Vak.ru
^ JSR 274
^ CM.bell-labs.com
^ ANSI C89, ISO/IEC 9899:1990, 1999, 2011
^ ISO/IEC 14882:1998, 2003, 2011
^ Codeproject.com: Functional Programming in C# 3.0 using Lambda Expression
^ ECMA-334; ISO/IEC 23270:2006
^ Softvelocity.com
^ ECMA-367; ISO/IEC 25436:2006
^ JSR 241
^ "The Haskell 2010 Language Report". http://www.haskell.org/onlinereport/haskell2010/. Retrieved 2011-12-07. Most Haskell implementations extend the Haskell 2010 standard.
^ 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.
^ ISO/IEC 10514-1:1996
^ GCC.GNU.org
^ Cirrus: Aspect-oriented programming in Delphi Prism
^ ISO 7185
^ PHP Manual, Chapter 19. Classes and Objects (PHP 5),
^ PHP Manual, Chapter 17. Functions
^ SMLNJ.org
^ The Go Programming Language Specification
^ Sheng Liang, Gilad Bracha. Dynamic class loading in the Java virtual machine. Volume 33, Issue 10 of ACM SIGPLAN Notices, October 1998.
^ Developer.apple.com
^ Scala runs on the Java Virtual Machine from which it inherits the runtime exception handling.
^ 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.
^ The ratio of line count tests won by each language to the number won by C when using the Compare to feature at benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org. Last updated May, 2006. 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.
^ From On the Expressive Power of Programming Languages, Matthias Felleisen, ESOP '90 3rd European Symposium on Programming.
^ Computer Language Benchmarks Game ranking

External links

99-bottles-of-beer.net — one program in over a thousand variations and multiple languages.
The speed, size and dependability of programming languages — charts and narrative based on The Computer Language Benchmarks Game data.
Shapes: Source Code Size and Run Time - charts based on current Benchmarks Game data.
Comparison of syntaxes with sample codes.
Syntax Across Languages
Scriptometer scores — multiple comparisons of 26 programming languages.
PLEAC — Programming Language Examples Alike Cookbook.
OHLOH Language Statistics — gives an indication of the popularity of programming languages in open-source projects.
History of Programming Language Statements — history and comparison of programming languages.

Comparison of programming languages

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