What is the best alternative to Smalltalk?

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score 297 · Answer 1

Haskell

Top Pro

Forces you to learn pure functional programming

It is pure and does not mix other programming paradigms into the language. This forces you to learn functional programming in its most pure form. You avoid falling back on old habits and learn an entirely new way to program. See More

Top Con

Difficult learning curve

Haskell lends itself well to powerful abstractions - the result is that even basic, commonly used libraries, while easy to use, are implemened using a vocabularly that requires a lot of backround in abstract mathematics to understand. Even a concept as simple as "combine A and B" is often, both in code and in tutorials, described in terms of confusing and discouraging terms like "monad", "magma", "monoid", "groupoid", and "ring". This also occasionally bears its ugly head in the form of complicated error messages from type inference. See More

Top Pro

Open source

All Haskell implementations are completely free and open source. See More

Top Con

Language extensions lead to unfamiliar code

Haskell's language extensions, while making the language incredibly flexible for experienced users, makes a lot of code incredibly unfamiliar for beginners. Some pragmas, like NoMonomorphismRestriction, have effects that seem completely transparent in code, leading beginners to wonder why it's there. Others, like ViewPatterns, and particularly TemplateHaskell, create completely new syntax rules that render code incomprehensible to beginners expecting vanilla function application. See More

Top Pro

Highly transferable concepts

Haskell's referential transparency, consistency, mathematics-oriented culture, and heavy amount of abstraction encourage problem solving at a very high level. The fact that this is all built upon little other than function application means that not only is the thought process, but even concrete solutions are very transferable to any other language. In fact, in Haskell, it's quite common for a solution to simply be written as an interpreter that can then generate code in some other language. Many other languages employ language-specific features, or work around a lack of features with heavy-handed design patterns that discourage abstraction, meaning that a lot of what is learned, and a lot of code that is needed to solve a particular problem just isn't very applicable to any other language's ecosystem. See More

Top Con

Symbols everywhere

Haskell allows users to define their own infix operators, even with their own precedence. The result is that some code is filled with foreign looking operators that are assumed to be special-case syntax. Even for programmers who know they're just functions, operators that change infix precedence can potentially break expectations of how an expression is evaluated, if not used with care. See More

Top Pro

Mathematical consistency

As Haskell lends itself exceedingly well to abstraction, and borrows heavily from the culture of pure mathematics, it means that a lot more code conforms to very high-level abstractions. You can expect code from vastly different libraries to follow the same rules, and to be incredibly self-consistent. It's not uncommon to find that a parser library works the same way as a string library, which works the same way as a window manager library. This often means that getting familiar and productive with new libraries is often much easier than in other languages. See More

Top Con

Package manager is unstable & lacking features

Cabal (There are other choices but this is the most popular) can not uninstall a package. Also working at a few locations it is difficult to have the same environment for each one be the same. See More

Top Pro

Referentially transparent

Haskell's Purely Functional approach means that code is referentially transparent. This means that to read a function, one only needs to know its arguments. Code works the same way that expressions work in Algebra class. There's no need to read the whole source code to determine if there's some subtle reference to some mutable state, and no worries about someone writing a "getter" that also mutates the object it's called on. Functions are all directly testable in the REPL, and there's no need to remember to call methods in a certain order to properly initialize an object. No breakage of encapsulation, and no leaky abstractions. See More

Top Con

You have to learn more than just FP

Haskell is not only a functional language but also a lazy, and statically typed one. Not only that but it's almost necessary to learn about monads before you can do anything useful. See More

Top Pro

Very few language constructs

The base language relies primarily on function application, with a very small amount of special-case syntax. Once you know the rules for function application, you know most of the language. See More

Top Con

You need some time to start seeing results

Haskell's static typing, while helpful when building a project, can be positively frustrating for beginners. Quick feedback for errors means delaying the dopamine hit of code actually running. While in some languages, a beginner's first experience may be their code printing "Hello World" and then crashing, in Haskell, similar code would more likely be met with an incomprehensible type error. See More

Top Pro

Easy to read

Haskell is a very terse language, particularly due to its type inference. This means there's nothing to distract from the intent of the code, making it very readable. This is in sharp contrast to languages like Java, where skimming code requires learning which details can be ignored. Haskell's terseness also lends itself to very clear inline examples in textbooks, and makes it a pleasure to read through code even on a cellphone screen. See More

Top Con

Lazily evaluated

Haskell's lazy evaluation implies a level of indirection - you're not passing a value, you're passing a thunk. This is often difficult to grasp not just for beginners, but for experienced programmers coming from strictly evaluated languages. This also means that, since for many, strict evaluation is their first instinct, initial expectations of a function's performance and complexity are often broken. See More

Top Pro

Quick feedback

It's often said that, in Haskell, if it compiles, it works. This short feedback loop can speed up learning process, by making it clear exactly when and where mistakes are made. See More

Top Con

Only pure functional programming

Not proper functional programming but a subset of the style called pure functional programming. See More

Top Pro

Hand-writeable concise syntax

Conciseness of Haskell lets us to write the expression on the whiteboard or paper and discuss with others easily. This is a strong benefit to learn FP over other languages. See More

Top Con

Too academic, hard to find "real world" code examples

Top Pro

Functions curry automatically

Every function that expects more than one arguments is basically a function that returns a partially applied function. This is well-suited to function composition, elegance, and concision. See More

Top Con

Documentation for most packages is short and lacking

A few Haskell packages are well documented but this is the exception, not the rule. Most of the time a list of function signatures is what passes for documentation. See More

Top Pro

Popular in teaching

Haskell is really popular in universities and academia as a tool to teach programming. A lot of books for people who don't know programming are written around Haskell. This means that there are a lot of resources for beginners in programming with which to learn Haskell and functional programming concepts. See More

Top Con

Curried type signatures obfuscate what were the in and out types originally

Top Pro

Easy syntax for people with a STEM degree

Since the basic syntax is very similar to mathematics, Haskell syntax should be easy for people who have taken higher math courses since they would be used to the symbols used in maths. See More

Top Pro

Powerful categorical abstractions

Makes categorical higher order abstractions easy to use and natural to the language. See More

Specs

Site:https://www.haskell.org/

Paradigm:functional

Type System:static

See All Experiences

297 109

score 211 · Answer 2

Haxe

Top Pro

Compiles to multiple platforms and languages

Haxe allows you to develop for Web, iOS, Android, Blackberry, Windows, OSX, Linux and others, all at once, without the need to switch languages and maintain separate code bases. This is possible because Haxe can compile to JavaScript, ActionScript, Flash AVM bytecode, C++, Neko, PHP, C# (.NET) and Java. Support for even more platforms and languages is under development. See More

Top Con

Bad support in some popular IDEs

While it has great support in Visual Studio Code and Vim for example, it still lacks support in some IDEs such as IntelliJ. See More

Top Pro

Powerfully expressive but easy to learn

The language was designed to be very expressive with the smallest possible amount of syntactic sugar. There are actually fewer keywords than other languages with similar power. See More

Top Con

You need to code interfaces to work with existing JavaScript code

Some popular libs like JQuery have maintained externs, for any specific code or lib already in JS you have to write the externs to use it in your haxe application. See More

Top Pro

Pick up errors at compile time

One big advantage over pure javascript, (or some other languages listed here) is that Haxe will pick up a whole range of errors when you compile, saving you the pain of having to try and debug them later. This includes everything from syntax errors ("Unexpected ;") to type errors ("Class user has no field username. Suggestion: username"). See More

Top Con

No Qt support

There is currently no support for Qt. See More

Top Pro

First class code completion

Code completion is built into the compiler and available to the IDE allowing for much smarter code completion that can actually parse and understand the syntax tree. See More

Top Con

Full programs only

You can create small utility functions with Haxe, but generally it is a lot more work than with other JS compilers. Haxe is best used when you have a larger project. See More

Top Pro

Syntactic macros

Syntactic macros allow you to extend compiler features at the syntax tree step. Macros come into play after code is parsed into the abstract syntax tree, and macros allow you to transform it before the rest of the compilation completes. This provides for immense power, while at the same time scoping the extensibility at a level that is powerful, but well constrained. See More

Top Con

It's not easy to convince people it's as good as it really is unless you can get them to really try it

Top Pro

Code reuse server side and client side

You can use the same classes on the server as you do on the client where applicable. This saves a lot of time. See More

Top Pro

Extremely fast compilation

Haxe can easily compile over 100,000 lines of code to JS in seconds on a mid-spec computer. See More

Top Pro

Ability to use existing JS libraries

Haxe has the ability to use "externs". These are haxe files which describe the usage of existing JS libraries. Get code completion and compile-time-checking for everything from jQuery to Node.js. Even without externs, native JS code can still be used through untyped code. See More

Top Pro

Similar to JavaScript and ActionScript 3

The language is very easy to learn for those with background in JavaScript or ActionScript 3. See More

Top Pro

Small, readable output

The output that is generated can be trimmed using "dead code elimination" to only include those functions and libraries that are strictly necessary. All code is very readable with only minimal extras for specific functionality. Small output is good for frontend development as file size is a major concern. See More

Top Pro

Powerful type inference with strong typing

After a type is inferred from its context, it cannot be changed to a new type, and type safety is done at compile time so it stays safe without the extra maintenance required for static typing. See More

Top Pro

Algebraic data types and pattern matching.

Top Pro

Large library support. From servers to games.

Haxelib (common library repo) and other sources contain large codebases for anything from cryptography to communications. A lot of these are fully cross platform and work with the JavaScript target. The JavaScript target can be used for everything from node.js server applications (with code completion) to games using either the Flash-like OpenFL library or direct canvas or WebGL programming. See More

Top Pro

Established project

Haxe has been around for more than 10 years (since 2005) and whilst not the most popular project, has had continuous growth. Highly unlikely to disappear or for support to stop. See More

Top Pro

Friendly community

Friendly community See More

Top Pro

Offload execution to the server with remoting

Using a remoting proxy you can get type safe server to client communications, allowing for remote method execution on the server as if they were part of the client side code. See More

Top Pro

Package management like Java

Package tree is just directory tree, it's wonderful! See More

Top Pro

Builtin conditional compilation support

Haxe supports conditional compilation, so depending on compiler flags Haxe will include or exlcude sections of your code. Making it easy to have debug and release builds. See More

Top Pro

Abstract enums allow constants with exhaustiveness check

You can define constants in an abstract enum and when used in a switch/case statement Haxe checks for exhaustiveness, making sure every constant is covered - with no runtime implication. See More

Top Pro

Type safety for exísting JS libraries

Haxe compiler will check types when using externs for existing libraries. See More

Top Pro

Available in NPM

Top Pro

Ability to skip type checking when calling non Haxe code

You should use externs when calling non Haxe code, but if you just need to call one or two external JS functions, you can skip type checking by calling untyped code. See More

Top Pro

Create without needing to be limited to a language, target, or commercial ecosystem

Top Pro

Abstracts allows me to create more intative api's without runtime overhead

Top Pro

Can create complex applications without needing webpack, npm or other crutches

Haxe has the power and expression to not need the npm dependancy hell that is common in js and typescript, bit it's still simple. See More

Specs

Platforms:Web, iOS, Android, Blackberry, Windows, OSX, Linux

Price:Free, Open Source

Site:https://haxe.org/

Current stable version:4.0.3

See All Experiences

211 54

score 142 · Answer 3

Julia

Top Pro

Strong dynamic typing

Dynamic and high level, but does not isolate the user from properly thinking about types. Can do explicit type signatures which is great for teaching structured thinking. See More

Top Con

Young language with limited support

Julia was released in 2012. Due to its short existence, there is a limited amount of support for the language. Very few libraries exist as of yet, and the community is still quite small (though growing quickly). See More

Top Pro

Almost as fast as C

Julia runs almost as fast as (and in fact in some cases faster than) C code. See More

Top Con

1-based array and column major

This design probably comes from Matlab, but makes it unnatural to interface C and C++ and python. See More

Top Pro

Great standard REPL

Out of the box Julia has a very good Read-Eval-Print-Loop, which both completes functions and types, as well as completion based on history of previous statements. It integrates well with the shell and has an excellent online help system. See More

Top Pro

Amazing learning curve

Julia requires no boilerplate code – a beginner needs to write only the parts they care about. This combined with the REPL provides the best learning experience available. See More

Top Pro

Powerful n-dimensional arrays

Julia has built in n-dimensional arrays similar in functionality as Python's numpy. See More

Top Pro

Nice regular syntax

Julia code is easy to read and avoid a lot of unnecessary special symbols and fluff. It uses newline to end statements and "end" to end blocks so there is no need for lots of semicolons and curly braces. It is regular in that unless it is a variable assignment, function name always comes first. No need to be confused about whether something is a method on an object or a free function. Unlike Python and Ruby, since you can annotate the types a function operates on, you can overload function names, so that you can use the same function name for many data types. So you can keep simple descriptive function names and not have to invent artificial function names to separate them from the type they operate on. See More

Top Pro

High-level code

Julia provides a high level of abstraction, making platform-independent programming trivial and easing the learning curve. See More

Top Pro

Written in itself

The Julia language is written in itself to a much larger extent than most other languages, so a budding programmer can read through the depths of the standard library and learn exactly how things work all the way down to the low-level bit-twiddling details, which can be englightening. See More

Top Pro

Function overloading

You can have multiple functions with the same name, but doing different things depending on function arguments and argument types. See More

Top Pro

Function and operator broadcasting

You can perform operations on scalars, for example 2^2 or [1, 2, 3].^2. See More

Top Pro

REPL-based

The Julia REPL allows quickly testing how some code behaves and gives access to documentation and package management immediately in the REPL. See More

Top Pro

Strong Metaprogramming

Julia allows you to edit Julia code in the language itself and write powerful macros. It is a great introduction to metaprogramming features See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, Linux, Mac, FreeBSD

Site:julialang.org

Current stable version:1.4

Type Model:Dynamically Typed

See All Experiences

142 43

score 381 · Answer 4

Rust

Top Pro

Catch errors at compile-time

Since Rust is statically typed, you can catch multiple errors during compile time. This is extremely helpful with debugging, especially compared with dynamically typed languages that may fail silently during runtime. See More

Top Con

Low-level programming language

This means that it encourages the programmer to be very careful in terms of how memory is allocated, etc. Most applications can run without exceeding the capacity of the server, even with an inefficient dynamic scripting language. See More

Top Pro

Threads without data races

Unique ownership system guarantees a mutable data to be owned and mutated by only one thread at a time, so there's no data race, and this guarantee is checked at compile time statically. Which means easy multi-threading. Of course, immutable data can be shared among multiple threads freely. See More

Top Con

Significant time required to understand the language fully

There's the infamous borrow checker for example. See More

Top Pro

Compiles to machine code allowing for extra efficiency

Rust uses LLVM as a backend, among other things this allows Rust code to compile down to machine languages. This allows developers to write programs that run as efficiently as possible. See More

Top Pro

Generics support

You don't have to write same array and dictionary classes hundreds and thousands times for strong type check by compiler. See More

Top Pro

Built-in concurrency

Rust has built-in support for concurrency. See More

Top Pro

Makes developers write optimal code

Rust is a modern programming language written around systems. It was designed from the ground up this way. It's language design makes developers write optimal code almost all the time, meaning you don't have to fully know and understand the compiler's source code in order to optimize your program. Furthermore, Rust does not copy from memory unnecessarily, to give an example: all types move by default and not copy. Even references to types do not copy by default. In other words, setting a reference to another reference destroys the original one unless it's stated otherwise. See More

Top Pro

Supports cross compilation for different architectures

Since Rust 1.8 you can install additional versions of the standard library for different targets using rustup/multirust. For example: $ rustup target add x86_64-unknown-linux-musl Which then allows for: $ cargo build --target x86_64-unknown-linux-musl See More

Top Pro

Support for macros

When you identify a part of your code which gets repeated often, which you cannot abstract using functions or classes, you can use Rust's built-in Macros. See More

Top Pro

Official package manager and build tool

Cargo is the official package manager for Rust. It comes with the language and downloads dependencies, compiles packages, and makes and uploads distributable packages See More

Top Pro

Easy to write understandable code

While not as verbose as Java, it still is much more verbose than languages like Go and Python. This means that the code is very explicit and easy to understand. See More

Top Pro

Functional Programming

Very easy to create functional with some additional from structure application. See More

Top Pro

Big community

The biggest community contributing to language. See More

Top Pro

Zero-cost futures or Async IO

Specs

Current stable version:1.4.0

See All Experiences

381 148

score 59 · Answer 5

Pharo

Top Pro

Object-Oriented

In Pharo everything is an object. Compiler - object, network - object, method - also an object. And objects communicate with messages. No operators, no control-flow statements. Just objects and messages. Few things to learn, but you can learn OOP well. See More

Top Con

Small community

But they are very friendly and supportive. Best help comes through the mailing lists so not always easily googlable. There is also a Slack community where help is nearly instantaneous. See More

Top Pro

Easily learnt

There is good, free documentation including several books written by experts with extensive examples. There is an online MOOC. There are many tutorial videos. Supportive conferences and community. Even a professional support option if desired. See More

Top Con

Single threaded

Pharo's VM only ever uses one CPU core. If you want to write code that uses more than one CPU core, you need to jump through hoops such as running multiple VMs and synchronising your data. See More

Top Pro

Live updates

The nature of Pharo being a "live" environment allows you to perform live updates to your system without requiring to restart it. You can upgrade/modify classes while serving requests at the same time. See More

Top Con

No stable 64 bit VM on Windows yet (work-in-progress)

64 bit support is on its way for Windows (experimental). Pharo 7 has 64 bit support for Mac and Linux as of Pharo 7. See More

Top Pro

Highly productive

Top Pro

Seaside

The framework for developing sophisticated web applications in Smalltalk is developed in Pharo. Seaside lets you build highly interactive web applications quickly, reusably and maintainably. See More

Top Pro

Remote debugging

Top Pro

Beautiful coding patterns in your IDE

No need to search google for compact beautiful examples of how to do things, your live environment source is available and you can easily live search, see how it works and copy how the masters would do it (examples most languages still copy too). See More

Top Pro

Glamorous toolkit & GTInspector

Most languages are still copying the Smalltalk tools of yesterday - GTInspector (written in Glamorous) takes live exploration of code/running objects to a new level. It's really slick, and better yet, you can easily write your own inspectors in 10 lines of code. See More

Top Pro

Code can be run on rock solid GemStone environment

Top Pro

64 bit support as of Pharo 7

Use 32 bit or 64 bit versions of Pharo on Windows, Mac & Linux See More

Top Pro

Advanced code analysis tools

MOOSE environment provides extensive, easily leveraged and class leading tools for code analysis and improvement. See More

Top Pro

Can run headless for production

Top Pro

Really simple networking and REST with Zinc

Top Pro

Graphics, graphing and visualisation framework - Roassal

Roassal and Mondrian provide fantastic and easily used frameworks for graphics, graphing and advanced visualisations (comparable to D3.js) but with much less code. Visualisations can be rendered into web friendly graphics (SVG, .png etc.) without additional work. See More

Specs

Platforms:MacOSX; Linux; Windows

License:MIT

Price:Free / Open Source

Auto Complete:Y

See All Specs

See All Experiences

59 19

score 435 · Answer 6

Clojure

Top Pro

Immutability is the default

Clojure programmers are highly encouraged to use immutable data in their code. Therefore, most data will be immutable by default. State change is handled by functions (for transformations) and atoms (an abstraction that encapsulates the idea of some entity having an identity). See More

Top Con

Confusing error messages

Clojure's error messages more often than not are very confusing. They usually involve stack traces that do not thoroughly explain where the error was caused or what caused it. See More

Top Pro

Minimal syntax

Being a LISP, programs are simple: they're just functions and data. That it doesn't get bogged down with syntax or the loftier FP concepts like monads makes it one of most approachable functional languages for beginners. See More

Top Con

Syntax can be alien / jarring for those used to other Lisps

Perhaps some may consider this attribute an advantage, but I do not. Clojure does not attempt to maintain significant compatibility with other Lisps. So, if you already know a Lisp or are used to the way Lisp works in general, you'll probably be confused if you take a look at Clojure. See these resources for more details on this subject: https://clojure.org/reference/lisps http://stackoverflow.com/q/6008313/2636454 http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com/2015/01/one-major-difference-between-clojure.html http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/153128/166211 See More

Top Pro

Tries to solve problems as simply as possible

Simplicity is one of the pillars on which Clojure is built. Clojure tries to solve many problems in software development as simply as possible. Instead of building complex interfaces, objects or factories, it uses immutability and simple data structures. See More

Top Con

Tied to the JVM and it's limitations.

Some language constructs were obviously created as workarounds for JVM limitations. This makes the language much less elegant than it could have been. Also, the JVM has a very cumbersome FFI. See More

Top Pro

Good for writing concurrent programs

Since Clojure is designed for concurrency, it offers things like Software Transaction Memory, functional programming without side-effects and immutable data structures right out of the box. This means that the development team can focus their energies on developing features instead of concurrency details. See More

Top Pro

Huge ecosystem of libraries to work with

There's a very large ecosystem of high-quality Clojure libraries which developers can use. One example is Incanter. It's a great data analytics library and a very powerful tool for dealing with matrices, datasets and csv files. See More

Top Pro

Cross platform

Clojure compiles to JVM bytecode and runs inside the JVM. This means that applications written in Clojure are cross-platform out of the box. See More

Top Pro

Rich Hickey

The creator is so awesome, he's a feature. Just look up his talks and see why. See More

Top Pro

Extensible

Clojure has an elegant macro system which enables language additions, Domain-specific languages (DSLs), to be created much easier than most other languages (with the exception of Racket, perhaps). See More

Top Pro

Dynamic language

A superb data processing language. While rich type and specification systems are available they are optional. See More

Top Pro

Great tool used in automating, configuring and managing dependencies available

Leiningen is a very useful tool for Clojure developers. It helps wiht automation, configuration and dependency management. It's basically a must for every Clojure project. See More

Top Pro

No C/Java syntax

Refreshing, BTW! See More

Top Pro

Game is available with which you can learn Clojure

Nightmod is a tool used to make "live-moddable" games. It displays the game's code while you are playing and allows you to inject new code using Clojure. This can be a fun and useful experience for people trying to learn Clojure. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, Linux, Mac

Price:Free, Open Source

Site:www.clojure.org

Current stable version:1.10.1

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435 105

score 230 · Answer 7

Nim

Top Pro

Great metaprogramming features

There are generics, templates, macros in Nim. They can allow you to write new DSL for your application, or avoid all boilerplate stuff. See More

Top Pro

Strict typing

Checks your code at compile time. See More

Top Pro

Compile-time execution

Nim has a built-in VM, which executes macros and some other code at compile time. For example, you can check if you're on Windows, and Nim will generate code only for it. See More

Top Pro

Really cross-platform

The same code can be used for web, server, desktop and mobile. See More

Top Pro

Built-in Unicode support

You can use unicode names for variables, there is "unicode" module for operations with unicode. See More

Top Pro

Type interferencing

You only need to specify types in your procedures and objects - you don't need to specify type when you're creating a new variable (unless you're creating it without initialization). See More

Top Pro

Multi paradigm

Imperative, OOP, functional programming in one language. See More

Top Pro

Garbage-collected

You don't need to deal with all those manual memory allocations, Nim can take care of it. But also you can use another GC, or tweak it for your real-time application or a game. See More

Top Pro

Has built-in unittest module

With built-in "unittest" module you can create test with a very readable code. See More

Top Pro

Easy to read

Nim has a lot of common with Python in terms of syntax. Indentation-based syntax, for/while loops. See More

Top Pro

Easy to integrate with another languages

You can use Nim with any language that can be interfaced with C. There's a tool which helps you to create new C and C++ bindings for Nim - c2nim. Also, you can use Nim with Objective C or even JavaScript (if you're compiling for these backends). See More

Top Pro

Supports UFCS (Unified Function Call Syntax)

writeLine(stdout, "hello") can be written as stdout.writeLine("hello") proc add(a: int): int = a + 5 can be used like 6.add.echo or 6.add().echo() See More

Top Pro

Has built-in async support

Nim has "asyncdispatch" module, which allows you to write async applications. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, MacOS/iOS, Linux /Android/Termux, *BSD, Solaris/SmartOS, HaikuOS, lots of others

License:MIT

CPU:All CPU architectures that have an ANSI C compiler

Site:https://nim-lang.org

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230 65

score 156 · Answer 8

Pascal / Object Pascal

Top Pro

Understanding of basics

Because of the verbosity and easy syntax, Pascal language is relatively easier to be learned and understood, even for someone who has no programming knowledge. It's said that Pascal code —if written well— is like reading pseudo code. See More

Top Con

Niche language

Most use of this language will be found in jobs supporting legacy code. It will be hard to find things to do with this language outside of that niche. See More

Top Pro

Easy

Pascal / Object pascal was used in schools during the 2000's to teach kids the basics of object oriented programming. See More

Top Con

No up-to-date version of language standards

In 1983, and update in 1990, the language was standardized with two standards: ISO/IEC 7185:1990 Pascal and ISO/IEC 10206:1990 Extended Pascal. However, Object Pascal extensions to the language have no official standards but in 1993, a draft proposal for object oriented Pascal standard was re; for review purposes only. There are no standards for modern features and enhancements, thus various Pascal dialects like Delphi or HP Pascal has their own enhancements and features. See More

Top Pro

Cross platform

Pascal development tools are available almost on every available platform, especially using Free Pascal. Pascal language is available on desktop like Mac, BSD, Linux, Windows, Solaris, etc.; on mobile like iOS, Android, etc.; also on managed environments like Java Virtual Machine (JVM) and .Net/Mono framework . There are even some Pascal to JavaScript transpilers such as Smart Pascal, so you can write client side web app using Pascal as well, if you really want to. See More

Top Con

All variables, types, constants and functions must be declared at the beginning of the code

Top Pro

Clear syntax

Pascal's syntax is clear and concise, for example: procedure test(); begin DoSomething(); end; See More

Top Pro

Enforces good programming practice

Numerous strong compile time checks with optional runtime checks ensure one doesn't do stupid things and even when one does (because the compiler can't prove it at compile time), the binary will check and report it at runtime. Correct modular programming implementation with proper namespacing, no file inclusion hack. See More

Top Pro

Easy GUI creation

Visual Basic may have predated Delphi but Delphi was the ground breaking visual designer which set the standards expected today by most GUI developers. Its rich component set was well designed, structured and extensible, it even has the ability to display live data from the attached database in its data controls. See More

Top Pro

Assembler Code and DLL/SO creation

You can put Assembler code in Intel or AT&T formats, to achieve great results of speed and accuracy. It is possible to create Dynamic Link Libraries or their equivalent in Unix-like systems so it's relatively easy to use and powerful. See More

Top Pro

Fast compilation

The compiler is fast, really fast. Compared to C/C++, the delphi compiler is designed to compile a decent sized desktop application in seconds rather than minutes. See More

Top Pro

Well balanced for desktop development

For desktop development, Delphi is productive, the code is easy to understand, compilation speed is blazing, and it produces well performing applications that are easy to deploy. The perfect balance between C# and C++. See More

Top Pro

Flexible

Using the Free Pascal Compiler (the main Pascal distribution) you can code in a language that can be procedural and imperative now, but it can became object-oriented simply adding a directive at the start of the source See More

Top Pro

Tons of academic reading

Being known as the programming language for education, especially in the 90's, there many academic reading and tutorials available on the internet. See More

Top Pro

Rich existing libraries

Both shipped with implementations and spread all over the web. Both natively written or bindings to libraries written in other languages. Typically to build non-trivial applications there's no need to surf the web as many things are implemented already. Streaming, output templating, socket & networking, web, database, image manipulation, high performance graphics, (de)compression, (de|en)cryption, regex, unit testing, json manipulation, google API, indexing, multithreading, external process management, the list just goes on and on! See More

Top Pro

Language depth

Object Pascal is being used to write custom kernels (Ultibo) and operating-systems for various ARM boards. So the way you work with the code scales from low-level to pure OOP high-level. Object Pascal has the same level of depth that you find in C/C++ but with added productivity. See More

Top Pro

Extensive third party libraries

There are large collections of third party components, many free which enable developers to add wide ranging and complex functionality to their code with ease See More

Top Pro

Still active

From the early roots of Pascal, Delphi has been developed and is still actively supported. It is used in many desktop applications today, and even supports multi platform coding. See More

Top Pro

Fast execution

The compiler generates fast and optimized code. No stop-the-universe garbage collection. See More

Top Pro

Automatic Memory Management

The new Delphi compilers are powered by Automatic Reference Counting to ease development. See More

Top Pro

Excellent Database development

Top Pro

Incredible GUI design tools

Lazarus and Delphi are both incredible GUI design tools, making rapid development a reality. Making changes to a GUI doesn't mean switching tools or waiting for things to load, it's right there as part of your core tools. See More

Top Pro

Available on a ridiculous number of platforms

FreePascal is available on/for Intel x86 (including 8086), AMD64/x86-64, PowerPC, PowerPC64, SPARC, ARM, AArch64, MIPS and the JVM. Supported operating systems include Linux, FreeBSD, Haiku, Mac OS X/iOS/iPhoneSimulator/Darwin, DOS (16 and 32 bit), Win32, Win64, WinCE, OS/2, MorphOS, Nintendo GBA, Nintendo DS, Nintendo Wii, Android, AIX and AROS. See More

Top Pro

Component based (reusability, decoupled, rich design architecture)

Top Pro

Suitably close to modern languages, without the pitfalls

It was developed as a teaching language and it shows. No syntax pitfalls and gently encourages good style. See More

Top Pro

Reliable language and code base

Most code from the Turbo Pascal days in the 80s still compiles, yet the language has since been adapted and extended with modern concepts, introducing OOP and interfaces, exception handling, native Unicode support, anonymous methods, generics, ARC and more. See More

Top Pro

Dynamic evolution of language.

Specs

Price:Free (FreePascal, GNU Pascal), varying price (Delphi)

Standard:ISO/IEC 7185:1990 Pascal and ISO/IEC 10206:1990 Extended Pascal

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156 50

score 102 · Answer 9

Common Lisp

Top Pro

Very Powerful REPL with SLIME

SLIME (Superior Lisp Interaction Mode for Emacs). See More

Top Pro

Carefully designed for interactive use

Almost all aspects of the language are designed with interactive/repl use in mind. See More

Top Pro

Condition/restart system

It is easy to recover from errors. Error resolution can be determined by the user at the REPL. See More

Top Pro

Image based runtime

The state of the program may be saved and reloaded as an image, supporting safer modification of the running program. New code may be compiled into the image as the program runs, while late binding ensures that symbol redefinitions take effect throughout the program. See More

Top Pro

Almost as fast as, or faster than, C

Some compilers such as SBCL can be faster than C or other low-level languages, and most compilers can generate fast native code. See More

102 36

score 408 · Answer 10

Elixir

Top Pro

Great documentation

Elixir's documentation is very good. It covers everything and always helps solving any problem you may have. It's also always available from the terminal. See More

Top Con

Deployment is still not as easy as it should be

Top Pro

Great for concurrency

Leverages the existing Erlang BEAM VM See More

Top Con

Some design choices may seem strange

Some design choices could have been a little more appealing, for example: using "do...end" comes natural in Ruby for blocks but Elixir uses them for everything and it looks pretty weird: Enum.map [1, 2, 3], fn(x) -> x * 2 end or receive do {:hello, msg} -> msg {:world, msg} -> "won't match" end See More

Top Pro

Great getting started tutorials

The tutorials are very clear and concise (even for a person not used to functional programming). Plus they are also very mobile friendly. See More

Top Pro

Syntax is similar to Ruby, making it familiar for people used to OOP

All of the benefits of Erlang; without as steep a learning curve of prolog based syntax. Elixir is heavily inspired by Ruby's syntax which many people love. See More

Top Pro

Full access to Erlang functions

You can call Erlang functions directly without any overhead: https://elixir-lang.org/getting-started/erlang-libraries.html See More

Top Pro

Powerful metaprogramming

Write code that writes code with Elixir macros. Macros make metaprogramming possible and define the language itself. See More

Top Pro

Scalability

Elixir programming is ideal for applications that have many users or are actively growing their audience. Elixir can easily cope with much traffic without extra costs for additional servers. More details can be found here. See More

Top Pro

Easy to download libraries

Comes with built in build tool called "mix". This will automatically download libraries and put them in the scope of the application when you add them to the "deps" function and run mix deps.get See More

Specs

Price:Open source (Free)

Site:https://elixir-lang.org

Current stable version:1.9.4

GZipped size:3.61 MB (without required Erlang VM)

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408 119

score 1095 · Answer 11

Python

Top Pro

Lots of tutorials

Python's popularity and beginner friendliness has led to a wealth of tutorials and example code on the internet. This means that when beginners have questions, they're very likely to be able to find an answer on their own just by searching. This is an advantage over some languages that are not as popular or covered as in-depth by its users. See More

Top Con

Inelegant and messy language design

The first impression given by well-chosen Python sample code is quite attractive. However, very soon a lack of unifying philosophy / theory behind the language starts to show more and more. This includes issues with OOP such as lack of consistency in the use of object methods vs. functions (e.g., is it x.sort() or sorted(x), or both for lists?), made worse by too many functions in global name space. Method names via mangling and the init(self) look and feel like features just bolted on an existing simpler language. See More

Top Pro

Easy to get started

On top of the wealth of tutorials and documentation, and the fact that it ships with a sizeable standard library, Python also ships with both an IDE (Integrated Development Environment: A graphical environment for editing running and debugging your code); as well as a text-based live interpreter. Both help users to get started trying out code immediately, and give users immediate feedback that aids learning. See More

Top Con

Not good for mobile development

You can use frameworks like Kivy, but if your ultimate goal is to write mobile apps Python may not be the best first choice. See More

Top Pro

Active and helpful community

Python has an active and helpful community, such as the comp.lang.python Google Groups, StackOverflow, reddit, etc. See More

Top Con

Language fragmentation

A large subset of the Python community still uses / relies upon Python 2, which is considered a legacy implementation by the Python authors. Some libraries still have varying degrees of support depending on which version of Python you use. There are syntactical differences between the versions. See More

Top Pro

Comes with extensive libraries

Python ships with a large standard library, including modules for everything from writing graphical applications, running servers, and doing unit testing. This means that beginners won't need to spend time searching for tools and libraries just to get started on their projects. See More

Top Con

The process of shipping/distributing software is reatively complicated

Once you have you program the process of having a way to send it to others to use is fragile and fragmented. Python is still looking for the right solution for this with still differences in opinion. These differences are a huge counter to Python's mantra of "There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it." See More

Top Pro

Clear syntax

Python's syntax is very clear and readable, making it excellent for beginners. The lack of extra characters like semicolons and curly braces reduces distractions, letting beginners focus on the meaning of the code. Significant whitespace also means that all code is properly and consistently indented. The language also uses natural english words such as 'and' and 'or', meaning that beginners need to learn fewer obscure symbols. On top of this, Python's dynamic type system means that code isn't cluttered with type information, which would further distract beginners from what the code is doing. See More

Top Con

Multi-threading can introduce unwanted complexity

Although the principals of multi-threading in Python are good, the simplicity can be deceptive and multi-threaded applications are not always easy to create when multiple additional factors are accounted for. Multi-thread processes have to be explicitly created manually. See More

Top Pro

Cross-platform

Installs and works on every major operating systems if not already installed by default (Linux, macOS). See More

Top Con

Hard to debug other people's code

As the structure of Python code is based on conventions many developers are not following them and so it is difficult to follow/extract the design of not trivial application from the code. While this is a con, I see it in other languages as well. It seems to depend on the programmer. Most people don't learn conventions first, they just start programming. Unless you work for someone who insists you follow the conventions, you will probably go with what you like. You might never look at the conventions. See More

Top Pro

Good documentation

The Python community has put a lot of work into creating excellent documentation filled with plain english describing functionality. Contrast this with other languages, such as Java, where documentation often contains a dry enumeration of the API. As a random example, consider GUI toolkit documentation - the tkinter documentation reads almost like a blog article, answering questions such as 'How do I...', whereas Java's Swing documentation contains dry descriptions that effectively reiterate the implementation code. On top of this, most functions contain 'Doc Strings', which mean that documentation is often immediately available, without even the need to search the internet. See More

Top Con

Limited support for functional programming

While Python imports some very useful and elegant bits and pieces from FP (such as list comprehensions, higher-order functions such as map and filter), the language's support for FP falls short of the expectations raised by included features. For example, no tail call optimisation or proper lambdas. Referential transparency can be destroyed in unexpected ways even when it seems to be guaranteed. Function composition is not built into the core language. Etc. See More

Top Pro

Can be used in many domains

Python can be used across virtually all domains: scientific, network, games, graphics, animation, web development, machine learning, and data science. See More

Top Con

Does not teach you about data types

Since Python is a dynamically typed language, you don't have to learn about data types if you start using Python as your first language. Data types being one of the most important concepts in programming. This also will cause trouble in the long run when you will have to (inevitably) learn and work with a statically typed language because you will be forced to learn the type system from scratch. See More

Top Pro

Has many libraries for scientific computing, data mining and machine learning

Python is commonly used in data science and has many libraries for scientific computing, such as numpy, pandas, matplotlib, etc. See More

Top Con

Might not be very future-proof

Lots of features that will probably be crucial as time goes (good support for parallelism for example) are missing or are not that well-supported in Python. Since 2.x and 3.x still exist, be prepared to switch if something makes 3.x take off in the future. See More

Top Pro

Very similar to pseudo-code

When learning Computer Science concepts such as algorithms and data structures, many texts use pseudo-code. Having a language such as Python whose syntax is very similar to pseudo-code is an obvious advantage that makes learning easier. See More

Top Con

Too opinionated for a general-purpose programming language

While it's a good language to learn and use after you have mastered a couple of other less rigid programming languages, it's definitely not good for first-time learners. Both the language itself and its community have made it quite clear that you should do everything the "Pythonic way" to get the best results, that it feels more like an opinionated framework instead of a general-purpose programming language, which means if you are a first-time learner and getting too "tuned" to the "Pythonic way" it will be much harder for you to learn other less-opinionated languages compared to the other way around. Like any programming languages and/or frameworks, I'd recommend first-time learners to learn less opinionated ones first to open up your mind, then learn some of the more opinionated ones to increase productivity for specific fields of works. After all, programming languages are just some utilities for the human mind to interface with the computers, and there are more suitable tools for different tasks, and you should master the "Pythonic way" (after you already have adequate experience in computer programming) instead of locking your mind too close to the "Pythonic way" as a first-time learner. See More

Top Pro

Supports various programming paradigms

Python supports three 'styles' of programming: Procedural programming. Object orientated programming. Functional programming. All three styles can be seamlessly interchanged and can be learnt in harmony in Python rather than being forced into one point of view, which is helpful for easing confusion over the debate amongst programmers over which programming paradigm is best, as developers will get the chance to try all of them. See More

Top Con

Abstraction to the point of hinderance

Python is abstracted far enough that if it's your first language, it will be harder to pick up lower level languages later versus going the other direction. See More

Top Pro

Advanced community projects

There are outstanding projects being actively developed in Python. Projects such as the following to name a random four: Django: a high-level Python Web framework that encourages rapid development and clean, pragmatic design. iPython: a rich architecture for interactive computing with shells, a notebook and which is embeddable as well as wrapping and able to wrap libraries written in other languages. Mercurial: a free, distributed source control management tool. It efficiently handles projects of any size and offers an easy and intuitive interface. PyPy: a fast, compliant alternative implementation of the Python language (2.7.3 and 3.2.3) with several advantages and distinct features including a Just-in-Time compiler for speed, reduced memory use, sandboxing, micro-threads for massive concurrency, ... When you move on from being a learner you can still stay with Python for those advanced tasks. See More

Top Con

Significant whitespace

While proper formatting is essential for any programmer, beginners often have trouble understanding the need and lack the discipline to do it. Add to that all those editors that randomly convert N spaces (usually 8) to tabs and you get an instant disaster. You may need to find yourself an editor/IDE you like and carry it with you on a thumb drive, which isn't a bad idea anyway. See More

Top Pro

Good introduction to data structures

Python's built-in support and syntax for common collections such as lists, dictionaries, and sets, as well as supporting features like list comprehensions, foreach loops, map, filter, and others, makes their use much easier to get into for beginners. Python's support for Object Orient Programming, but with dynamic typing, also makes the topic of Data Structures much more accessible, as it takes the focus off of more tedious aspects, such as type casting and explicitly defined interfaces. Python's convention of only hiding methods through prefacing them with underscores further takes the focus off of details such as Access Modifiers common in languages such as Java and C++, allowing beginners to focus on the core concepts, without much worry for language specific implementation details. See More

Top Con

It is best suited for scripting, but so are many other languages.

i.e. running js as a script in a node is trivial. Even languages that were not meant to run as a script are easy to use as a scripting language with just a .sh file. See More

Top Pro

One right way to do things

One of the Guiding Principles of Python is that there should be only one obvious way to do things. This is helpful for beginners because it means that there is likely a best answer for questions about how things should be done. See More

Top Con

Version Confusion with V2.x and V3.x

Top Pro

It's really simple

It's very simple for understanding how programming works. If you don't like programming in Python, you probably won't like programming. It is a good way to find out with little investment. If you like, it is a great language. I wouldn't look for a language that has everything you eventually need to know in programming, such as static typing, in my first language. It should be easy to learn. You can pick up the hard stuff later if you tackle C or C++ or assembler. It will make learning them much easier. If you start with them, you might quit programming due to the difficulty of learning. See More

Top Con

Unflexible userbase

You will be expected to rigidly stick to the coding practices and to do everything by-the-numbers. One of the most common complaints I heard from people who left Plone, which is Python based, to Drupal, which is PHP based, is the community is more like a frat house than a community. If you look for help, make sure you follow the rules of whatever type of group you are requesting help from. See More

Top Pro

Easy to find jobs

Python's popularity also means that it's commonly in use in production at many companies - it's even one of the primary languages in use at Google. Furthermore, as a concise scripting language, it's very commonly used for smaller tasks, as an alternative to shell scripts. Python was also designed to make it easy to interface with other languages such as C, and so it is often used as 'glue code' between components written in other languages. See More

Top Con

Assignment

Heavily relies on assignment, with no distinction between defining the variable and assigning the value. This makes it necessary to introduce rather complex environmental model of computation. See More

Top Pro

Import Turtle

Do something visually interesting in minutes by using the turtle standard library package. https://docs.python.org/3.6/library/turtle.html Turtle graphics is a popular way for introducing programming to kids. It was part of the original Logo programming language developed by Wally Feurzig and Seymour Papert in 1966. Imagine a robotic turtle starting at (0, 0) in the x-y plane. After an import turtle, give it the command turtle.forward(15), and it moves (on-screen!) 15 pixels in the direction it is facing, drawing a line as it moves. Give it the command turtle.right(25), and it rotates in-place 25 degrees clockwise. Turtle can draw intricate shapes using programs that repeat simple moves. Example Turtle Star Drawing from turtle import * color('red', 'yellow') begin_fill() while True: forward(200) left(170) if abs(pos()) < 1: break end_fill() done() See More

Top Pro

Has features of both high and low level language

It is somewhere between C and Java. See More

Top Pro

Interpreters for JS, Microtontrollers, .Net , Java & others

Python is not limited to just be cross platform. It goes far beyond all high level languages since it can run on top of several other frameworks & architectures : Examples of interpreters: Standard (PC Win/Lin/Mac, ARM, Raspberry, Smartphones): CPython usually, but some more specialized for smartphones: Kyvi, QPython, ... Web Browser JS : Brython, PyJS, .Net : IronPython Java: Jython Microcontrollers with WiFi like ESP8266 or ESP32: MicroPython Can be statically compiled (instead of interpreted) with Cython. (Do not mix up with cPython) With python, you're sure your code can run (almost) everywhere, from 2€ computers to the most expensives. So, for instance, with Jython you can access the Java libraries with Python language. See More

Top Pro

Static typing via mypy

Python's syntax supports optional type annotations for use with a third-party static type checker, which can catch a certain class of bugs at compile time. This also makes it easier for beginners to gradually transition to statically typed languages instead of wrestling with the compiler from the start. See More

Top Pro

Best chances of earning most money

According to Quartz, Python programming skills on average earn $100,000 per year. Closely followed by Java, C++, JavaScript, C, and R with $90,000 per year and above. See More

Top Pro

Includes pygame library

Want to start game development? No problem! Using pygame open-source library you can fast begin creating games without worrying about pointers or undefined behaviors which they exists in C/C++. See More

Top Pro

Mobile versions

Mobile versions are available but can be difficult to find. Examples for android are pydroid and qpython See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, Linux, macOS, AIX, IBM i, iOS, z/OS, Solaris, VMS

Current stable version:3.8.1 and 2.7.16

GZipped size:22.5MB

Typing discipline:Dynamically typed

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1095 297

score 142 · Answer 12

Racket

Top Pro

Realm of Racket is an excellent entry-level guidebook

Realm of Racket teaches the big-bang approach for managing world state. It does so by walking the reader through the development of small games. There are few guidebooks that are as useful and entertaining. See More

Top Pro

Racket was designed to teach functional programming from the start

Racket is based on Scheme (LISP Family) and is very similar to Clojure. So there are a ton of (). The reason it is easier to learn is that it is not trying to be "Pure" if there is even such a thing in terms of Functional Programming. The great thing about Racket is it has everything included. You get DrRacket for developing programs. You want to add a picture to your software you can insert pictures. If you want to add libraries just open the package manager. The Syntax is an opinion but it really does feel easier to see what is happening since everything is in brackets) Racket is a really a Programming Language for making Programming Languages. So there are smaller syntax Racket called Student Racket which makes things easier to pick up. See More

Top Pro

Free resources to Learn

Includes several free online books and great documentation. See More

Top Pro

Great RPEL IDEA included Dr. Racket

Top Pro

Active community

Racket has an active community of users/developers that makes it easy to get help when needed. See More

Top Pro

Syntax fits to functional programming

Although syntax is different from that of mainstream languages, S-expressions are a perfect match to functional programming. See More

Top Pro

Easily embeddable

Racket is famously embedded in the game engine underlying Naughty Dog's Uncharted and The Last of Us games, because it proved to be so easy to embed. See More

Specs

Platforms:Linux, Windows, OSX

Price:Free

Site:racket-lang.org

Current stable version:7.5

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142 52

score 138 · Answer 13

F#

Top Pro

Concise syntax

F#'s syntax tends to be terse while remaining very readable and easy to understand without being a chore to write. See More

Top Con

Has no ad-hoc polymorphism (á la Type Classes)

You have generics, you have interfaces, you have inheritance, you have a lot of things at your disposal but you don't have Type Clases. They can be emulated using some clever constructs but there's nothing like having the real thing. See More

Top Pro

Easier transition from other paradigms

Since F# is not a purely functional language, it lends itself to being more easily picked up by programmers that have experience with other paradigms. See More

Top Pro

.NET Interoperability

Since F# runs on the Common Language Runtime or CLR, it has access to the entire .NET Framework, as well as libraries written in other .NET languages such as C#, VB.NET, and C++/CLI. See More

Top Pro

Multiplatform, it runs on .Net Core

Forget Xamarin and Mono. F# now runs on the multiplatform .Net Core! See More

Top Pro

Natively supported by Visual Studio

This is a .Net language natively supported by Visual Studio. Though it is not as tooled up as C# the support is still substantial. In particular, C# deployment scenarios can be enabled for it with small C# wrapper projects. Integration with Visual Studio provides: IntelliSense, debugging, projects an other features. See More

Top Pro

You can run F# in the browser

Thanks to a project like Fable, you can write and run your client app in F# and run it over JavaScript. It allows you to share code between your server and client. See More

Top Pro

Fall into the pit of success

F# directs you into a workflow where the right way is the path of least resistance. Coming from a C# background, its restrictions might feel arbitrary at first (e.g., what do you mean my code has to be in dependency order!? Arbitrary alphabetical or bust!), but you'll soon realize that your code is cohesive, concise and consistent in a way that it never was before - and you can compile and run with confidence! See More

Top Pro

F# is supported by Xamarin

Thanks to Xamarin, F# is a functional language that you can use to build for iOS, Android and Windows. See More

Specs

License:Apache 2.0

Site:http://www.fsharp.org

Current stable version:4.1

IDE Support:Visual Studio, Code, Rider

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138 52

score 423 · Answer 14

Go

Top Pro

Exceptionally simple and scalable multithreaded and concurrent programming

Goroutines are "lightweight threads" that runs on OS threads. They provide a simple way for concurrent operations — prepending a function with go will execute it concurrently. It utilizes channels for communication between goroutines which aids to prevent races and makes synchronizing execution effortless across goroutines. The maximum number of OS threads goroutines can run on may be defined at compile time with the GOMAXPROCS variable. See More

Top Con

Hard to abstract even the simplest notions

Go is famously regarded as very simple. However, this simplicity becomes problematic in time. Programmers who use Go find themselves over and over again writing the same thing from a very low point of view. Domains not already served by libraries that are easy to glue are very difficult to get into. See More

Top Pro

Simplified C-like syntax that is as easy to read and write as Python

The language is designed in a manner that seems logical. Syntax is simplified to reduce burden on the programmer and compiler developers. See More

Top Con

Designed to make the programmer expendable

Go was designed for large team projects where many contributors may be incompetent. That Go can still get things done under these conditions is a testament to its utility in this niche. Go's infamously weak abstraction power is thus a feature, not a bug, meant to prevent your teammates from doing too much damage. This also means any team member can be easily replaced by another code monkey at minimum cost. Good for the company, bad for you. The more talented programmers, on the other hand, will be very frustrated by having one hand tied behind their back. See More

Top Pro

Great team working behind it

Go has a solid team of engineers working on it (some of the best networking engineers in the world are working on Go). Up until now, the great engineering of the language has compensated for its lack of power. See More

Top Con

Easy to shadow variable

Due to single character only difference, declare and assign statement can easily shadow variable from outer scope unconsciously. Example: err := nil if xxx { err := somefunctionthatreturnsanerr } return err // always return nil See More

Top Pro

API documentation is rich in content; easy to memorize

Only features deemed critical are added to the language to prevent cruft from working its way into the language. The language is small enough to fit inside one's head without having to repeatedly open documentation. Documentation is hosted on an official webpage in a manner that is simple to read and understand. See More

Top Con

No forms designer

Those who are used to Visual Studio can feel the lack of a forms designer for rapid development. See More

Top Pro

The go compiler compiles binaries instantly — as fast as a scripting language interpreter

Compiled binaries are fast — about as fast in C in most cases. Compiles on every OS without effort — truly cross-platform compiler. As a result of the fast compilation speed, you can use the gorun program to use go source code as if it was a scripting language. See More

Top Con

Performance slowdown because of indirect calls and garbage collection

Practically no meaningful Go application can be written without indirect function calls and garbage collection, these are central to Go's core infrastructure. But these are major impediments to achieving good performance. See More

Top Pro

Built-in unit testing

The idiomatic approach to writing a Go software project is to perform test-driven development with unit testing. Every source code file should have an associated *_test.go file which tests functions in the code. See More

Top Con

Implementation of interfaces are difficult to figure out

Finding out what interfaces are implemented by a struct requires a magic crystal ball. They are easy to write, but difficult to read and trawl through. See More

Top Pro

Easy to install and configure; simple to compile software

Go software can be immediately installed, regardless of your operating system, package manager, or processor architecture with the go get command. Software is compiled statically by default so there is no need to worry about software dependencies on the client system. Makefiles and headers are no longer necessary, as the package system automatically resolves dependencies, downloads source code and compiles via a single command: go build. See More

Top Pro

Provides tools for automatically formatting code for your entire software project

This helps keep every programmer on the same page in a project and eliminates arguments over formatting styles. See More

Top Pro

Programmers don't have to argue over what 10% subet of the language to implement in their software project

The language promotes programming in a specific idiomatic style, which helps keep every programmer on the same page. See More

Top Pro

Great language for building networking services

Go was started as a systems language but now it has fully committed in the niche of networking services. This has been a brilliant move by Go because it allows them to capitalize on the immense talent of the Go engineering team (who are in the most part network engineers). In a world dominated by Java EE and slow scripting language, Go was a breath of fresh air and it continues to be one of the most powerful languages if you want to build networking services. See More

Top Pro

Supports 'modules' in the form of packages

Every Go source file contains a package line that indicates which package a file belongs to. If the name of the package is 'main', it indicates that this is a program that will be compiled into a binary. Otherwise, it will recognize that it is a package. See More

Top Pro

Automatically generates API documentation for installed packages

Godoc is provided to automatically generate API documentation for Go projects. Godoc also hosts its own self-contained web server that will list documentation for all installed packages in your Go path. See More

Top Pro

Demonstrates a unique, simple concept to object-oriented programming

All types are essentially objects, be they type aliases or structs. The compiler automatically associates types to their methods at compile time. Those methods are automatically associated to all interfaces that match. This allows you to gain the benefits of multiple inheritance without glue code. As a result of the design, classes are rendered obsolete and the resulting style is easy to comprehend. See More

Top Pro

Supports splitting source code into multiple files

As long as every source code file in a directory has the same package name, the compiler will automatically concatenate all of the files together during the compilation process. See More

Top Pro

Multiple variables may be assigned on a single line

This conveniently eliminates the need to create temporary variables. Fibonacci example: x, y = y, x+y See More

Top Pro

Syntax for exported code from a package is simplified to be less verbose than other languages

Any variable, type and function whose name begins with a capital letter will be exported by a project, while all other code remains private. There is no longer a need to signify that a piece of code is 'private' or 'public' manually. See More

Top Pro

Supports functional programming techniques such as function literals

This naturally also supports first class and high order functions, so you may pass functions as variables to other functions. See More

Top Pro

Performance is on the order of C and Java

Go is blazing fast, but easier to write than Python, JS, Ruby, or many other dynamic languages. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, Linux, Mac etc.

Current stable version:1.12.1 / February 25, 2019

Developer:Google with Ken Thompson, Robert Griesemer, Rob Pike

GZipped size:217 mb

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score 244 · Answer 15

Ruby

Top Pro

Clean syntax

Ruby has a very clean syntax that makes code easier to both read and write than more traditional Object Oriented languages, such as Java. For beginning programmers, this means the focus is on the meaning of the program, where it should be, rather than trying to figure out the meaning of obscure characters. presidents = ["Ford", "Carter", "Reagan", "Bush1", "Clinton", "Bush2"] for ss in 0...presidents.length print ss, ": ", presidents[presidents.length - ss - 1], "\n"; end See More

Top Con

Its ecosystem is limited outside of web development

If you're looking to host, generate, manipulate or secure a website, Ruby is your language. There's also some great support here for infrastructure as code work via Chef. However, it just doesn't have the depth and breadth that Python does. Things like native UI development, high performance math, and embedded / small footprint environments are barely supported at all in Ruby-space. See More

Top Pro

A large ecosystem of tools & libraries

Ruby has a large ecosystem of tools and libraries for just about every use. Such as ORMs (Active Record, DatabMapper), Web Application Frameworks(Rails, Sinatra, Volt), Virtualization Orchestration(docker-api, drelict), CLI tools(Thor, Commando), GUI Frameworks(Shoes, FXRuby) and the list goes on. If you can think of it, there is probably a gem for that ( and if not you can create your own and share with the community). See More

Top Con

Monkeypatching

Requiring a library can change the rules of the language. This is very confusing for beginners. See More

Top Pro

Widely used

Ruby is one of the most popular languages for developing web sites. As a result, there's an abundant amount of documentation, sample code, and libraries available for learning the language and getting your project up and running. The most popular features are just 'gem install' away. Additionally, it is easier to find Ruby jobs because of this. See More

Top Con

Meta-programming causes confusion for new developers

The ability for libraries to open classes and augment them leads to confusion for new developers since it is not clear who injected the functionality into some standard class. In other words, if two modules decide to modify the same function on the same class can introduce a number of issues. Mainly, the order in which the modules are included matters. Since you more or less can't tell what kind of "helper" functions a module might write into any class, or for that matter, where the helper function was included from, you may sometimes wonder why class X can do Y sometimes but not at other times. See More

Top Pro

Newbie-friendly community

Top Con

No docstrings

It's hard to access Ruby's documentation from the REPL (irb), unlike Python, Lisp, and Smalltalk which let you ask functions how to use them, which is a great benefit to the beginner, and which also encourages you to document your program as you code it. See More

Top Pro

Ruby on Rails

Lays out an easy to follow and opinionated MVC pattern that teaches best practices through necessity. See More

Top Con

Does not teach you about data types

Since Ruby is a dynamically typed language, you don't have to learn about data types if you start using Ruby as your first language. Data types being one of the most important concepts in programming. This also will cause trouble in the long run when you will have to (inevitably) learn and work with a statically typed language because you will be forced to learn the type system from scratch. See More

Top Pro

Test Driven Development, #1

It's the fore-runner and trend setter for TDD. See More

Top Con

Dynamic type system

Majority of bugs could be resolved with types. See More

Top Pro

Hugely object oriented

Object oriented programming is one of the most important concepts in programming. See More

Top Con

Arcane grammar based on Perl

Ruby is too complicated for beginners: arcane Perlisms; semi-significant whitespace; parentheses are not necessary around method arguments, except for sometimes they are; control constructs could be elegantly implemented with block like Smalltalk (Instead they're baked into the grammar.); verbose block syntax, unless it happens to be the last argument. (proc lambda). There are too many exceptional cases and arcane precedence rules. See More

Top Pro

Meta-programming

Meta-programming provides efficiency and freedom. See More

Top Con

Viewed as a web development language

Despite its flexibility and performance, Ruby is often seen as being unsuitable for other tasks by those who are not familiar with it. As such, a lot of discussion about it centers around Rails, which is not at all relevant if you're using Ruby for something else, such as game development. See More

Top Pro

No indentation.

No indentation increase development efficiency. See More

Top Con

More than one way to do it

A problem inspired by Perl. The core API interfaces are bloated. There's at least four different ways to define methods. More is not always better. Sometimes it's just more. See More

Top Pro

Pry

Top Con

Focus on Object-Oriented Programming (OOP)

Focussing on OOP in a beginner stage is an easy and popular plan, but not the best one. See More

Specs

Price:Open Source (Free)

Site:https://www.ruby-lang.org

Current stable version:2.6.0

GZipped size:15.9 MB

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244 121

score 184 · Answer 16

C++

Top Pro

Huge language supports most everything

C++ is a large language with an even larger community and following. It has libraries for every kind of task that is possible to do with C++ See More

Top Con

Huge language gets in the way of learning

C++ is such an atrociously over-complicated language that its learning curve may get in the way of learning fundamentals. Learning C++ well is a ten-year project, and even experts are frequently surprised by the language. See More

Top Pro

Powerful memory management

Allows puting large arrays on the "heap" to avoid "stack overflow". See More

Top Con

Undefined behavior

Subtle errors can render the entire program "undefined" by the complicated C++ standard. The standard imposes no requirements in such cases. Thus C++ compiler writers are free to ignore the existence of such cases and Bad Things are prone to happen instead. Even experts can't reliably avoid undefined cases in C++, so how can beginners be expected to do so? See More

Top Pro

Teaches fundamental OOP

Teaches you to leverage object oriented programming. See More

Top Con

Module system is not great

C++ uses the #include mechanism provided by C. Which unfortunately is a poor way of accessing the API of a library. Some of the reasons why the module system is weak are: Compile time scalability: The compiler must preprocess every header included in a file, and every header included in those headers. This process must be repeated for every translation unit in the program. As can be imagined, this doesn't scale very well. For each header added you are increasing the compilation time exponentially. Fragile: modules included are treated as textual imports by the compiler. This causes all sorts of problems since they are subject to any macro definitions in the time of the inclusion. If any of these macro definitions collide with a name in the library it can break the library API . See More

Top Pro

Teaches problem solving

The great STL is the most powerful Data Structure and Algorithms Library. It would benefit you very much in problem solving, your main main way to love programming. The code is much compact compared to Java and C#. No unnecessary classes are in your way; yet when you need classes they are available unlike C. The code runs very fast. See More

Top Con

No two programmers can agree on which 10% subset of C++ to use

C++ is such a huge and complicated language, that programmers have to learn a disciplined subset of it to reliably get anything done. The problem is, no-one can agree on which subset to use and they can't understand each other. See More

Top Pro

Teaches low-level programming, but doesn't have as many pitfalls as C

Teaches data types, low-level program flow and the so common C-style syntax while not being as much of a pain as C itself. See More

Top Con

Tough to learn as the first language

Many of the concepts are hard to grasp if you have no prior programming experience. See More

Top Pro

C code can be used in C++ code

Most C code will work as C++. See More

Top Con

Retains nearly all bad habits of C

Top Pro

Best way to understand algorithms

Top Con

No reflection

C++ objects are frustratingly opaque. This makes debugging especially difficult, something beginners have to do a lot. See More

Top Pro

Universal, portable, best complexity/efficiency trade-off

Top Con

Memory leaks and segmentation faults

Because C and C++ allow the user direct access to memory and don't provide garbage collection threads, there is a probability that a program may have a "memory leak", which occurs when something a programmer allocated in the heap is not deallocated properly. Also, attempting to dereference memory protected by the operating system causes a segmentation fault and kills the program. See More

Top Pro

Faster execution of the same algorithms

Because C++ (and its precursor C) are "lower level" than a lot of popular programming languages they are also faster at executing code than Java or C# which require VMs and garbage collection threads. See More

Top Con

Arcane binding rules

Top Pro

Excellent compiler optimization

Both open source compilers (such as Clang and GCC), and proprietary ones (like Intel's and Microsoft's) are very good at analyzing program flow and program optimization. This is mostly due to the widespread usage of C/C++ applications running everything from mobile/desktop/server Operating Systems, to search engines and webserver software, and the demand for performance. See More

Top Con

Duplicates C features in incompatible ways

Arrays, strings, pointers, etc. have both C and C++ versions. Sometimes the C++ versions are worse. This is more useless trivia beginners have to sort through. See More

Top Pro

Has lots of library

C++ is mature and everything has standardized library. See More

Top Con

Bugs easily corrupt the memory you need to find them

You can usually get a core dump, but often the call stack gets completely overwritten. Compilers are not even consistent in how they map the binary objects to code. See More

Top Pro

STD is often updated

The functionalities keep growing throughout the years. C++11 gave us a soft type of garbage collecting with the smart pointers. See More

Top Con

Painfully slow compilation

Beginners need fast feedback See More

Top Con

No way to locate definitions

No modules, just files, and no way to tell where anything came from. See More

Top Con

Complicated types

Top Con

Undefined behaviors and weak limited type safety

Undefined behavior in a program can cause unexpected results, making it hard to debug. With UB, program behavior may vary wildly depending on optimization settings. There are many cases that invoke UB, such as signed overflow, invalid dereferences, large integer shifts, uninitialized variables, etc. C++ allows for non-type safe operations such as logic errors, wild pointers, buffer overflow, etc. UB and type safety issues create a large number of bugs and security vulnerabilities. See More

Top Con

Standard library missing important features

Top Con

Incomprehensible operator overloading resoution

Top Con

Exceptions incompatible with C++ manual memory management

Specs

Price:Depends on Implementation

Standard: ISO/IEC 14882 or C++17

Engine:UE4 , Cocos-2d-x

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score 66 · Answer 17

Swift

Top Pro

Modern syntax

Top Con

Swift is a moving target

They've released 1.2 so far, and 2.0 is coming soon. Every small update brings adjustments to paradigms (such as how to do type casting) that can be a little frustrating to absorb. Objective C was also constantly updating, however, but not at the same rate these days. See More

Top Pro

Swift is closer to other platforms

Apple’s modern programming language is easier to understand for non-iOS developers and minimizes time for additional explanations and clarifications. Moreover, Swift can be used as a script language. It is an interesting solution for the iOS community to unify writing of build scripts. At the time being iOS developers are split up in regard to this activity. Some of them write build scripts in Bash, others use Ruby, Python, etc. Swift gives an amazing opportunity to be applied to all iOS programming needs. More details can be found here https://mlsdev.com/blog/51-7-advantages-of-using-swift-over-objective-c See More

Top Pro

Works with Apple's Cocoa and Cocoa Touch frameworks

Top Pro

Can be used as a Just-In-Time language

Top Pro

Inherent parallelism

Top Pro

Low memory footprint due to reference counting

Top Pro

Backed by Apple

Top Pro

Performance speed comparable to native C

Top Pro

Swift has some clever tricks up its sleeve

Due to having elements of a functional programming language. Things like 'map' and 'filter' for example. See More

Top Pro

Uses LLVM compiler and Obj-C runtime allowing C, Objective-C, Objective-C++ and Swift code to run side by side within a single program

Specs

Platforms:Mac, Linux

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66 49

score 7 · Answer 18

Red

Top Con

Not production ready

Red is still under development and not considered stable. See More

Top Pro

Simple toolchain

Other languages have complex, multi-step setups that beginners often get stuck on. Red has no installer, no setup, no dependencies*, just a single small (~1MB) command-line executable with both the compiler and repl. On Windows, you don't even have to launch executable from the command line--it has a GUI-console. See More

Top Con

Still in beta

It mostly works. It's good enough for building usable applications, but some planned features are missing. See More

Top Pro

Very simple syntax

Red syntax is a lot like Rebol. It's easier than most languages for beginners to pick up. See More

Top Pro

Both low and high-level

Red has low enough access to do systems programming, but it's expressive enough for high-level scripting. See More

Top Pro

Low cognitive load

Red has very simple syntax that's easy to learn. It gets out of your way and lets you think about the problem instead, enhancing productivity. See More

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score 32 · Answer 19

Assembly

Top Con

Difficult learning curve

Starting off as a beginner with assembly language could prove very daunting. I suggest learning a high level language first (e.g. C) to get a good grasp of programming - especially dealing with bits, bytes, numbers, accessing memory with pointers (which is why I suggest C). Then once that person is comfortable writing C (or whatever high level language) programs, they would find moving to assembler a little less of a "What the hell?!!!" experience. See More

Top Pro

Low Level - it's how the computer works

One of the best ways to learn how a computer actually works is to work your way up from lower level abstractions. Assembly, being only a level above machine code, is low enough level to make it clear how the computer is actually performing a computation, including code flow and loops, but high enough level to not be excessively tedious for the type of small projects that a student would do at the beginning of their first programming class. Use of an assembler with macros can stretch this even a bit further. See More

Top Con

Rarely a requirement or used in professional employment

Top Pro

Naturally creates fast and small programs

Because of its natural syntax and low-level nature, assembly language programs are typically really small and fast. Unlike other programming languages, in assembly language it is really hard to create a slow and over-bloated program. See More

Top Con

Not very portable

The instruction set may change depending on what CPU architecture is being used. Also, there will be some differences in implementations due to different assemblers being used, such as with changes in OS. See More

Top Pro

Useful for embedded systems

A curriculum that involves an embedded component, such as an Arduino or a Raspberry Pi, can encourage students by allowing them to immediately connect their work with 'real systems'. Assembly is the ideal language for getting started with and understanding these devices, and since Assembly can be called from C, the code will still be useful if students move on to C later in the program. See More

Top Con

Hyperspecific syntax isn't a good first step to learning other modern languages

Top Pro

Uniform syntax

Assembly language syntax is relatively uniform, and so there's less room for a student to get confused by obscure characters, or miss some meaning implied by structure, such as with scoping rules, or call-by-name/value/reference semantics. While there may be a lot of mnemonics to look up, most work involves only a very small subset of them. See More

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score 128 · Answer 20

ClojureScript

Top Pro

Live interactive programming with figwheel

Figwheel builds your ClojureScript code and hot loads it into the browser as you are coding! Every time you save your ClojureScript source file, the changes are sent to the browser so that you can see the effects of modifying your code in real time. See More

Top Con

Syntax may seem cryptic to people not used to Lisp

Lisp is sometimes called "syntax-less" and this is bewildering to those steeped in Algol-type syntax (Java, Javascript, C, etc). Being a dialect of Lisp, ClojureScript's syntax may seem cryptic and hard to understand for people not used to it. While Lisp has very little syntax compared to other languages and it's generally considered pretty terse, there's still an initial overhead in learning the language. See More

Top Pro

Simple syntax

Lispness makes ClojureScript trivial to comprehend after an initial learning overhead. See More

Top Pro

Easy to use existing JavaScript libraries

Clojure and ClojureScript are designed to be able to interact with their host. So the language by design makes it is easy to use existing JS libraries. See More

Top Pro

Targets Google Closure-ready JavaScript for immense optimizations

Google's Closure Library converts regular JavaScript into a highly optimized form - including dead code analysis/elimination. It can even remove pieces of unused code from 3rd party libraries (eg, if you import jQuery but only use one function, Google Closure includes only that piece). See More

Top Pro

Share application logic between browser and Clojure server

Clojure is also able to run web servers, so one can reap similar benefits to NodeJS in terms of sharing code between client and server. See More

Top Pro

Can be used with React out of the box

Top Pro

Excellent build tools

Both Leiningen and Boot are great build tools that manage code dependencies and deployment. See More

Top Pro

Excellent tools for web development

ClojureScript has superb wrappers around React.js (see Reagent) that make building single-page apps a breeze. With figwheel, it's a web dev experience unlike any other -- hotloaded code, repl interaction, and instantly reflected changes make good development fun and fast. You can add things like Garden to make CSS-writing part of the same holistic experience and suddenly all development is a pleasant, smooth process. See More

Top Pro

The Spec core library

From the creator of Clojure: Spec is a new core library (Clojure 1.9 and Clojurescript) to support data and function specifications in Clojure. Writing a spec should enable automatic: Validation, Error reporting, Destructuring, Instrumentation, Test-data generation and Generative test generation. See More

Specs

Price:Open Source

Site:https://clojurescript.org/

Current stable version:1.9

GZipped size:32 kB

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