# Comparison of programming languages

Programming languages are used for controlling the behavior of a machine (often a computer). Like natural languages, programming languages follow rules for syntax and semantics.
There are thousands of programming languages 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), ISLISP, 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.
| Language | Original purpose | Imperative | Object-oriented | Functional | Procedural | Generic | Reflective | Other paradigms | Standardized |
| 1C:Enterprise programming language | Application, RAD, business, general, web, mobile | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Object-based, Prototype-based programming | No |
| ActionScript | Application, client-side, web | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No | prototype-based | Yes 1999-2003, ActionScript 1.0 with ES3, ActionScript 2.0 with ES3 and partial ES4 draft, ActionScript 3.0 with ES4 draft, ActionScript 3.0 with E4X |
| Ada | Application, embedded, realtime, system | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | No | Concurrent, distributed | Yes 1983, 2005, 2012, ANSI, ISO, GOST 27831-88 |
| Aldor | Highly domain-specific, symbolic computing | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No | No | | No |
| ALGOL 58 | Application | Yes | No | No | No | No | No | | No |
| ALGOL 60 | Application | Yes | No | No | Yes | Yes | No | | Yes 1960, IFIP WG 2.1, ISO |
| ALGOL 68 | Application | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Concurrent | Yes 1968, IFIP WG 2.1, GOST 27974-88, |
| Ateji PX | Parallel application | No | Yes | No | No | No | No | pi calculus | No |
| APL | Application, data processing | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Array-oriented, tacit | Yes 1989, ISO |
| Assembly language | General | Yes | No | No | No | No | No | Any, syntax is usually highly specific, related to the target processor | Yes 1985 IEEE 694-1985 |
| AutoHotkey | GUI automation (macros), highly domain-specific | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | No | No | | No |
| AutoIt | GUI automation (macros), highly domain-specific | Yes | No | No | Yes | No | No | | No |
| Ballerina | Integration, agile, server-side, general | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No | Concurrent, transactional, statically and strongly typed, diagrammatic–visual | De facto standard via Ballerina Language Specification |
| Bash | Shell, scripting | Yes | No | No | Yes | No | No | | Optionally POSIX.2 |
| BASIC | Application, education | Yes | No | No | Yes | No | No | | Yes 1983, ANSI, ISO, ECMA |
| BeanShell | Application, scripting | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No | Yes | | No In progress, JCP |
| BLISS | System | No | No | No | Yes | No | No | | No |
| BlitzMax | Application, game | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | No | Yes | | No |
| Boo | Application, game scripting | No | Yes | No | No | No | No | | No |
| C | Application, system, general purpose, low-level operations | Yes | No | No | Yes | No | No | | Yes 1989, ANSI C89, ISO/IEC C90, ISO/IEC C95, ISO/IEC C99, ISO/IEC C11, ISO/IEC C17, ISO/IEC C2x |
| C++ | Application, system | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | | Yes 1998, ISO/IEC C++98, ISO/IEC C++03, ISO/IEC C++11, ISO/IEC C++14, ISO/IEC C++17, ISO/IEC C++20, ISO/IEC C++23 |
| C# | Application, RAD, business, client-side, general, server-side, web, game programming | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Structured, concurrent | Yes 2000, ECMA, ISO |
| Clarion | General, business, web | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No | No | | Un­known |
| Clean | General | No | No | Yes | No | Yes | No | | No |
| Clojure | General | No | No | Yes | No | No | No | Concurrent | No |
| CLU | General | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | No | | No |
| COBOL | Application, business | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | No | No | | Yes 1968 ANSI X3.23, 1974, 1985; ISO/IEC 1989:1985, 2002, 2014, 2023 |
| Cobra | Application, business, general, web | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | | No |
| ColdFusion (CFML) | Web | No | Yes | No | Yes | No | No | | No |
| Common Lisp | General | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Extensible syntax, Array-oriented, syntactic macros, multiple dispatch, concurrent | Yes 1994, ANSI |
| COMAL 80 | Education | Yes | No | No | Yes | No | No | | No |
| Crystal | General purpose | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Concurrent | No |
| Curry | Application | No | No | Yes | No | Yes | No | lazy evaluation, non-determinism | De facto standard via Curry Language Report |
| Cython | Application, general, numerical computing | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No | 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 | Yes | Yes | No | Structured | Yes ECMA-408 standard |
| Delphi, Object Pascal | General purpose | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | | Un­known |
| Dylan | Application | No | Yes | Yes | No | No | No | | No |
| Eiffel | General, application, business, client-side, server-side, web (EWF) | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes Erl-G | Distributed SCOOP, Void-safe | Yes 2005, ECMA, ISO |
| ELAN | Education | Yes | No | No | Yes | No | No | Structured, stepwise refinement | No |
| Elixir | Application, distributed | No | No | Yes | No | No | Yes | Concurrent, distributed | No |
| Erlang | Application, distributed | No | No | Yes | No | No | Yes | Concurrent, distributed | No |
| Euphoria | Application | No | No | No | Yes | No | Yes | | No |
| Factor | General | Yes | No | Can be viewed as | No | Yes | Yes | Stack-oriented | No |
| FP | | No | No | Yes | No | No | No | | No |
| F# | Application | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | | No |
| Forth | General | Yes | No | No | Yes | No | Yes | Stack-oriented | Yes 1994, ANSI |
| Fortran | Application, numerical computing | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Array-based, vectorized, concurrent, native distributed/shared-memory parallelism | Yes 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 | No | Yes | Yes | No | | No |
| Gambas | Application | Yes | Yes | No | No | No | No | | No |
| Game Maker Language | Application, game programming | Yes | Yes | No | No | No | No | | No |
| GLBasic | Application, games | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | No | No | Simple object-oriented | No |
| Go | Application, web, server-side | Yes | Can be viewed as | Can be viewed as | Yes | Yes | Yes | Concurrent | De facto standard via Go Language Specification |
| Gosu | Application, general, scripting, web | Yes | Yes | No | No | Yes | Yes | | No |
| GraphTalk | Application | No | Yes | No | No | No | No | Logic | No |
| Groovy | Application, general, scripting, web | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Meta-programming | No In progress, JCP |
| Harbour | Application, business, data processing, general, web | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Declarative | No |
| Haskell | Application | No | No | Yes | No | Yes | No | Lazy evaluation | Yes 2010, Haskell 2010 |
| Haxe | Application, general, web | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | | No |
| HyperTalk | Application, RAD, general | Yes | No | No | Yes | No | Yes | Weakly typed | Un­known |
| Io | Application, host-driven scripting | Yes | Yes | No | No | No | No | | No |
| IPL | General | No | No | Yes | No | No | No | | Un­known |
| ISLISP | General | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | No | | Yes 1997, 2007, ISO |
| J | Application, data processing | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Array-oriented, function-level, tacit, concurrent | No |
| JADE | Application, distributed | Yes | Yes | No | No | No | No | | No |
| Java | Application, business, client-side, general, mobile development, server-side, web | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Concurrent | De facto standard via Java Language Specification |
| JavaScript | Client-side, server-side, web | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | prototype-based | Yes ECMA-262 standard |
| Joy | Research | No | No | Yes | No | No | No | Stack-oriented | No |
| jq | "awk for JSON" | No | No | Yes | No | No | No | Tacit, Backtracking, Streaming, PEG | No |
| Julia | General, technical computing | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Multiple dispatch, meta, scalar and array-oriented, parallel, concurrent, distributed ("cloud") | No |
| K | Data processing, business | No | No | No | No | No | No | Array-oriented, tacit | Un­known |
| Kotlin | Application, mobile development, server-side, client-side, web | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | | De facto standard via Kotlin Language Specification |
| Ksh | Shell, scripting | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | No | No | Several variants, custom programmable, dynamic loadable modules | Optionally POSIX.2 |
| LabVIEW (G) | Application, industrial instrumentation-automation | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No | No | Dataflow, visual | No |
| Lisp | General | No | No | Yes | No | No | No | | Un­known |
| LiveCode | Application, RAD, general | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | No | Yes | Weakly typed | No |
| Logtalk | Artificial intelligence, application | No | Yes | No | No | No | Yes | Logic | No |
| Linden Scripting Language (LSL) | Virtual worlds content scripting and animation | Yes | No | No | Yes | No | No | Scripts exist in in-world objects | De facto reference is the Second Life implementation of LSL. |
| Lua | Application, embedded scripting | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Aspect-oriented, prototype-based | No |
| Maple | Symbolic computation, numerical computing | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No | Distributed | No |
| Mathematica | Symbolic language | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Logic, distributed | No |
| MATLAB | Highly domain-specific, numerical computing | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | No | No | | No |
| Modula-2 | Application, system | Yes | No | No | No | Yes | No | | Yes 1996, ISO |
| Modula-3 | Application | Yes | Yes | No | No | Yes | No | | No |
| MUMPS (M) | General, application, databases | Yes | Approved for next Standard | No | Yes | Partially Thru Indirection and Xecute | Yes | Concurrent, multi-user, NoSQL, transaction processing | Yes 1977 ANSI, 1995, ISO 2020 |
| Nim | Application, general, web, scripting, system | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Multiple dispatch, concurrent, meta | No |
| Oberon | Application, system | Yes | Yes | No | No | No | No | | No |
| Object Pascal | Application, general, mobile app, web | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Structured | No |
| Objective-C | Application, general | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | No | Yes | Concurrent | No |
| OCaml | Application, general | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | | No |
| Occam | General | Yes | No | No | Yes | No | No | Concurrent, process-oriented | No |
| Opa | Web applications | Yes | No | Yes | No | Yes | No | Distributed | No |
| OpenLisp | General, Embedded Lisp Engine | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | No | | Optionally ISLISP |
| Oxygene | Application | Yes | Yes | No | No | Yes | No | | No |
| Oz-Mozart | Application, distribution, education | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No | No | Concurrent, logic | No |
| Pascal | Application, education | Yes | No | No | Yes | No | No | | Yes 1983, ISO |
| Perl | Application, scripting, text processing, Web | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | | No |
| PHP | Server-side, web application, web | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | | De facto standard via language specification and Requests for Comments (RFCs) |
| PL/I | Application | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | No | No | | Yes 1969, ECMA-50 (1976) |
| Plus | Application, system development | Yes | No | No | Yes | No | No | | No |
| PostScript | Graphics, page description | Yes | No | No | Yes | No | No | Concatenative, stack-oriented | De facto standard via the PostScript Reference Manual |
| PowerShell | Administration, application, general, scripting | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Pipeline | No |
| Prolog | Application, artificial intelligence | No | No | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Logic, declarative | Yes 1995, ISO/IEC 13211-1:1995, TC1 2007, TC2 2012, TC3 2017 |
| PureBasic | Application | Yes | No | No | Yes | No | No | | No |
| Python | Application, general, web, scripting, artificial intelligence, scientific computing | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Aspect-oriented | De facto standard via Python Enhancement Proposals (PEPs) |
| R | Application, statistics | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | | No |
| Racket | Education, general, scripting | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Modular, logic, meta | No |
| Raku | Scripting, text processing, glue | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Aspect-oriented, array, lazy evaluation, multiple dispatch, metaprogramming | No |
| REALbasic | Application | No | No | No | Yes | No | No | | Un­known |
| Rebol | Distributed | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Dialected | No |
| REXX | Scripting | Yes | Yes (NetRexx and Object REXX dialects) | No | Yes | No | No | | Yes 1996 (ANSI X3.274-1996) |
| RPG | Application, system | Yes | No | No | Yes | No | No | | No |
| Ring | Application | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | metaprogramming, declarative, natural-language | No |
| Ruby | Application, scripting, web | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No | Yes | Aspect-oriented | Yes 2011(JIS X 3017), 2012(ISO/IEC 30170) |
| Rust | Application, server-side, system, web | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Concurrent | No |
| S | Application, statistics | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No | | No |
| S-Lang | Application, numerical, scripting | Yes | No | No | Yes | No | No | | No |
| Scala | Application, general, parallel, distributed, web | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Data-oriented programming, metaprogramming | De facto standard via Scala Language Specification (SLS) |
| Scheme | Education, general | Yes | No | Yes | No | No | No | meta, extensible-syntax | De facto 1975-2013, R$^0$RS, R$^1$RS, R$^2$RS, R$^3$RS, R$^4$RS, R$^5$RS, R$^6$RS, R$^7$RS Small Edition |
| Seed7 | Application, general, scripting, web | Yes | Yes | No | No | Yes | Yes | Multi-paradigm, extensible, structured | No |
| Simula | Education, general | Yes | Yes | No | No | No | No | discrete event simulation, multi-threaded (quasi-parallel) program execution | Yes 1968 |
| Small Basic | Application, education, games | Yes | No | No | No | No | No | Component-oriented | No |
| Smalltalk | Application, general, business, artificial intelligence, education, web | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Concurrent, declarative | Yes 1998, ANSI |
| SNOBOL | Text processing | No | No | No | No | No | No | | Un­known |
| Standard ML | Application | Yes | No | Yes | No | Yes | No | | Yes 1997, SML '97 |
| Swift | Application, general | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Concurrent, declarative, protocol-oriented | No |
| Tcl | Application, scripting, web | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | | No |
| V (Vlang) | Application, general, system, game, web, server-side | Yes | Can be viewed as | Can be viewed as | Yes | Yes | Yes | Concurrent | No |
| Visual Basic | Application, RAD, education, business, general, (Includes VBA), office automation | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | No | Component-oriented | No |
| Visual Basic .NET | Application, RAD, education, web, business, general | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Structured, concurrent | No |
| Visual FoxPro | Application | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | No | No | Data-centric, logic | No |
| Visual Prolog | Application | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No | No | Declarative, logic | No |
| Wolfram Language | Symbolic language | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Logic, distributed | No |
| XL | | Yes | Yes | No | No | No | No | concept programming | No |
| Xojo | Application, RAD, general, web | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | No | Yes | | No |
| XPath/XQuery | Databases, data processing, scripting | No | No | Yes | No | No | No | Tree-oriented | Yes 1999 W3C XPath 1, 2010 W3C XQuery 1, 2014 W3C XPath/XQuery 3.0 |
| Zeek | Domain-specific, application | Yes | No | No | No | No | No | | No |
| Zig | Application, general, system | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Concurrent | No |
| Zsh | Shell, scripting | Yes | No | No | Yes | No | No | Loadable modules | Optionally POSIX.2 |

## 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 programmers explicitly add checks for these kinds of errors. Psychologically, different cognitive biases (e.g., optimism bias) may affect novices and experts alike and lead them to skip these checks. This can lead to erroneous behavior.
Failsafe I/O is a feature of 1C:Enterprise, Ada (exceptions), ALGOL (exceptions or return value depending on function), Ballerina, C#, Common Lisp ("conditions and restarts" system), Curry, D (throwing on failure), Erlang, Fortran, Go (unless result explicitly ignored), Gosu, Harbour, Haskell, ISLISP, Java, Julia, Kotlin, LabVIEW, Mathematica, Objective-C (exceptions), OCaml (exceptions), OpenLisp, PHP, Python, Raku, Rebol, Rexx (with optional signal on... trap handling), Ring, Ruby, Rust (unless result explicitly ignored), Scala, Smalltalk, Standard ML, Swift ≥ 2.0 (exceptions), Tcl, Visual Basic, Visual Basic .NET, Visual Prolog, Wolfram Language, Xojo, XPath/XQuery (exceptions), and Zeek.
No Failsafe I/O: AutoHotkey (global ErrorLevel must be explicitly checked), C, COBOL, Eiffel (it actually depends on the library and it is not defined by the language), GLBasic (will generally cause program to crash), RPG, Lua (some functions do not warn or throw exceptions), and Perl.
Some I/O checking is built in C++ (STL iostreams throw on failure but C APIs like stdio or POSIX do not) and Object Pascal, in Bash it is optional.

## Expressiveness

| Language | Statements ratio | Lines ratio |
| 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. 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.

## 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.

## Timeline of specific language comparisons

* 1974 – Comparative Notes on Algol 68 and PL/I – 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 – 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