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, distributed, generic, imperative object-oriented, procedural, | 1983, ANSI, ISO, GOST 27831-88 |
| 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 |
| ALGOL 68 | Application | concurrent, imperative | 1968, IFIP WG 2.1, GOST 27974-88, |
| 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 |
| BLISS | System | procedural | No |
| BlitzMax | Application, game | imperative, object-oriented, procedural | No |
| Boo | Application | No | |
| C | System | imperative, procedural | 1989, ANSI C89, ISO C90/C99, ISO C11 |
| C++ | Application, system, Database, business, etc.. | generic, imperative, object-oriented, procedural, functional | 2011, ISO |
| C# | Application, business, client-side, general, server-side, Web | functional, generic, imperative, object-oriented, reflective | 2000, ECMA, ISO |
| Clarion | General, business, Web | functional, 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| Modula-3 | Application | generic, imperative, object-oriented | No |
| Oberon | Application, system | imperative, object-oriented | No |
| Objective-C | Application | imperative, object-oriented, reflective | No |
| OCaml | Application | functional, generic, imperative, object-oriented | No |
| Object Pascal (Delphi) | Application, business, client-side, general, server-side, Web | aspect-oriented, 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 |
| 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, procedural, 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 |
| 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 |
| 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? |
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