Language Comparison Table
| Language | Paradigm(s) | Standardized | Type strength | Type safety | Expression of types | Type compatibility | Type checking | Parameter Passing Methods Available | Garbage Collected | Intended use | Design goals |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ActionScript | imperative programming, object-oriented, event-driven programming | Yes
, ECMA |
strong | safe | static | Yes | Web design | ||||
| Ada | concurrent, distributed programming, generic programming, imperative programming, object-oriented | Yes
, ANSI, ISO, ANSI/MIL-STD-1815A-1983, ISO/IEC 8652, ISO/IEC TR 24718, GOST 27831-88 |
strong | safe | explicit | nominative | static | by value, by reference (compiler chosen if not determined by the data type) | GC is allowed, but not mandated | Embedded, real-time, mission-critical, long-lived, and large scale systems | Program reliability and maintenance, Programming as a human activity, Efficiency Language Reference Manual |
| ALGOL 68 | concurrent, imperative programming | Yes | strong | safe | explicit | structural | static or dynamic (programmer chosen) | by value or by reference (programmer chosen) | Yes | Application | Completeness and clarity of design, Orthogonal design, Security, Efficiency (Static mode checking, Mode-independent parsing, Independent compilation, Loop optimization, Representations in minimal & larger character sets) |
| BASIC | procedural programming | Yes | varies by dialect | varies by dialect | Education | Simplicity | |||||
| C | imperative programming | Yes | weak | unsafe | explicit | nominative | static | by value, by reference (through pointers) | No | System, Embedded | Low level access, Minimal constraint |
| C# | imperative programming, object-oriented, generic programming, reflective programming | Yes | strong | safe (unsafe allowed) | implicit | nominative | static | Yes | Application | Rapid application development | |
| C++ | imperative programming, object-oriented, generic programming | Yes
, ISO |
strong | safe (unsafe allowed) | explicit, partially implicit | nominative, structural | static, dynamic | by value, by reference (through reference types) | No | Application, System | Abstraction, Efficiency, Compatibility |
| Clean | functional programming, generic programming | No | strong | implicit | static | Yes | General | Correctness, Modularity | |||
| COBOL | imperative programming, object-oriented | Yes | strong | static | No | Business and Financial Applications | Readability | ||||
| ColdFusion | procedural programming, object-oriented | No | weak | implicit | dynamic | Web Development | Rapid Application Development, Ease of use | ||||
| Common Lisp | imperative programming, functional programming, object-oriented | Yes | strong | safe | dynamic | Yes | General | Standardize Lisp | |||
| D | imperative programming, object-oriented, generic programming | No | strong | safe, unsafe allowed | explicit, optional inferred | nominative, structural | static, dynamic | by value, by reference (through reference types) | Yes | Application, System | Compilability, Correctness, Efficiency |
| E | imperative, object-oriented, object-capability, communicating event loops | No
, still in development |
strong (runtime) | safe | optional explicit | structural | dynamic | by value | Yes | Secure collaboration, distributed systems, running untrusted applications, high-level “scripting” | Familiarity to C/Java/JS users; less error-prone concurrency & security |
| eC | imperative programming, object-oriented, generic programming, reflective programming | No | weak | unsafe | explicit, partially implicit | nominative, complex conversions system | static, dynamic | according to data type, or explicitly by value, by reference | Reference counting | Applications, GUIs, System, Games | Elegance, Performance, Simplicity, Lightness, 99.9% C compatibility |
| Eiffel | imperative programming, object-oriented, generic programming | Yes | strong | safe | nominative | static | Yes | Application | Correctness, Efficiency, Design by contract | ||
| Erlang | functional programming, concurrent, distributed programming | No | strong | dynamic | Yes | Telecom and distributed applications | Fault tolerance, Scalability | ||||
| Forth | imperative programming, stack-oriented | Yes
, ANSI |
none | n/a | n/a | n/a | n/a | No | Application, Embedded systems | Compact implementations, Low level access, Interactive programming | |
| Fortran | imperative programming, procedural programming, object-oriented | Yes | strong | safe | nominative | static | No | Scientific and numeric applications | Runtime efficiency, Simple syntax | ||
| Groovy | imperative programming, object-oriented, aspect-oriented programming | No | strong | safe | implicit | dynamic | Yes | Application | JVM compatibility | ||
| Haskell | functional programming, generic programming, lazy evaluation | Yes | strong | safe | inferred, optional explicit annotations | polymorphic structural | static | Yes | Application, Research | lazy evaluation, Teaching and research, completely formally described Report Preface | |
| Io | object-oriented, prototype | No | strong | dynamic | Yes | ||||||
| J | array programming, function-level programming, tacit programming | No | strong | safe | dynamic | Data processing | Terseness, Expressiveness, Powerful Data Manipulation | ||||
| Java | imperative programming, object-oriented, generic programming, reflective programming | No | strong | safe | explicit | nominative | static | by value | Yes | Application | Write once run anywhere |
| JavaScript | imperative programming, object-oriented, functional programming, reflective programming | Yes | weak | implicit | dynamic | Yes | Client side web scripting | ||||
| Joy | functional programming, stack-oriented | No | strong | safe | dynamic | functional programming research | concatenative | ||||
| Lisp | functional programming, reflective programming; others vary by dialect | No | strong | dynamic | Yes | General | Simple notation for Lambda calculus, Homoiconicity | ||||
| Logo | procedural programming, functional programming | No | strong | safe | implicit | structural | dynamic | Yes | Education | Simple syntax, Turtle graphics, Interactive programming | |
| Lua | procedural programming, imperative programming, reflective | No | strong | safe | implicit | dynamic | Yes | Host-driven Scripting | Small, embedded, configuration. | ||
| Lucid | dataflow programming, functional programming | No | strong | safe | dynamic | stream processing | dataflow | ||||
| Mathematica | functional programming, procedural programming | No | strong | dynamic | Yes | Numeric computation and visualization | |||||
| MAXScript | imperative programming, object-oriented, procedural programming | No | strong | safe | implicit | dynamic | by value, by reference | 3D Art Tools, Scripting | Simplicity, Accessibilty | ||
| Modula-3 | imperative programming, object-oriented, procedural programming, generic programming | No | strong | safe (unsafe allowed) | explicit | structural | static | by value, by reference | Yes | Application, Systems | Simple, Object oriented |
| Nial | functional programming, array programming | No | strong | dynamic | Data processing | ||||||
| Oberon-2 | procedural programming, imperative programming, object-oriented | No | strong | safe | explicit | structural | static | by value, by reference | Yes | Teaching, System | Simplicity |
| Object Pascal (Delphi) | imperative programming, object-oriented, generic programming | No | strong | safe (unsafe allowed) | explicit | nominative | static | Yes | Application, System | Readability, Rapid application development, Modularity | |
| Objective-C | imperative programming, object-oriented, reflective programming | Yes | weak | explicit | static | Yes
(as of 2.0) |
Application | Smalltalk like, Component based code reuse, C compatibility | |||
| Ocaml | object-oriented, functional programming, imperative programming, generic programming | No | strong | safe | inferred, optional explicit annotations | polymorphic structural | static | by value | Yes | Application | Efficiency, Robustness, Correctness |
| Oz | logic programming, functional programming, imperative programming, object-oriented, concurrent programming | No | dynamic | Yes | Education | ||||||
| Pascal | imperative programming, procedural programming | Yes
(Extended Pascal standardized under ISO) |
strong | safe | explicit | static | by value, by reference | No | Education | Readability, Discipline, Modularity | |
| Perl | imperative programming, procedural programming, reflective programming, functional programming, object-oriented, generic programming | No | weak | implicit | dynamic | by reference | Reference counting | Text processing, Scripting | Terseness, Expressiveness | ||
| PHP | imperative programming, object-oriented, reflective programming | No | weak | dynamic | Yes | Web Application, CLI | Robustness and Simplicity | ||||
| Prolog | logic programming | Yes
, ISO |
strong | dynamic | Yes | Problem solving, Artificial intelligence | declarative programming | ||||
| Python | imperative programming, object-oriented, functional programming, aspect-oriented programming, reflective programming | No | strong | safe | implicit | dynamic | Call by object reference | Yes | Application, Education, Scripting | Simplicity, Readability, Expressiveness, Modularity | |
| RapidQ | imperative programming, component-oriented programming, event-driven programming | No | strong (none for Variant type) | safe | static | by reference, by value | Application | Rapid application development, Simplicity, BASIC compatibility | |||
| Ruby | imperative programming, object-oriented, aspect-oriented programming, reflective programming | No | strong | implicit | dynamic | by reference | Yes | Application, Scripting | Expressiveness, Readability | ||
| Scala | object-oriented, functional programming, generic programming | No | strong | partially implicit | static | Yes | Education | ||||
| Scheme | functional programming | Yes
, R5RS, R6RS |
strong | safe | implicit | dynamic (latent) | by value | Yes | General, Education | Minimalistic, Lexical Scoping | |
| Smalltalk | object-oriented, concurrent programming, event-driven programming, imperative programming, declarative programming | Yes
, ANSI |
strong | safe | implicit | dynamic | Yes | Application, Education | Uniformity, Pure object oriented | ||
| Tcl | imperative programming, procedural programming, event-driven programming, object-oriented (via extensions) | No | weak | implicit | dynamic | by value | Yes | Embedded, Application, Scripting | Extend, Embed and Integrate | ||
| V | functional programming, stack-oriented, concatenative | No | strong | safe | dynamic | functional programming research | concatenative | ||||
| Visual Basic | component-oriented programming, event-driven programming | No | strong | safe | nominative | static | by reference, by value (explicit) | Yes | Application | Rapid application development, Simplicity | |
| Visual Basic .NET | object-oriented, event-driven programming | No | strong | static | by reference, by value (both explicit) | Yes | Application | Rapid application development, Simplicity | |||
| Windows PowerShell | imperative programming, object-oriented, functional programming, pipeline programming, reflective programming | No | strong | safe | implicit | dynamic | Scripting | ||||
| Language | Paradigm(s) | Standardized | Type strength | Type safety | Expression of types | Type compatibility | Type checking | Parameter Passing Methods Available | Garbage Collected | Intended use | Design goals |