Functional programming
Many modern (and some older) languages, e.g. C++, Eiffel, Groovy, Lisp, Smalltalk, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, Scala, and many others, support first-class function objects and may even make significant use of them. Functional programming languages additionally support closures, i.e. first-class functions that can 'close over' variables in their surrounding environment at creation time. During compilation, a transformation known as lambda lifting converts the closures into function objects.