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What are the best Meta-programming languages?

16

Options
Considered

106

User
Recs.

Jan 29, 2024

Last
Updated

16 Options Considered

Best Meta-programming languages	Price	Current stable version	Platforms
-- Nim	-	2.0.0	Windows, MacOS/iOS, Linux /Android/Termux, *BSD, Solaris/SmartOS, HaikuOS, lots of others
-- Common Lisp	-	-	-
-- Racket	-	8.5	Linux, Windows, OSX
-- Rust	-	1.71.1	Linux, MacOS X, Windows, BSD
-- Ruby	-	2.6.0	-

Nim

Top Pro

Compile-time execution

Nim has 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

ElatedBelisama's Experience

Absolutely amazing language, a dream language for me. See More

Specs

Current stable version:2.0.0

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

GZipped size:14,2 MB

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

AwareAusrine's Experience

just real powerful, imagine c with python syntax having lisp macros and inline assembly! 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

Really cross-platform

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

Top Pro

Strict typing

Checks your code at compile time. 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

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

Multi paradigm

Imperative, OOP, functional programming in one language. 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

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 async support

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

Top Pro

All in one programming language

Very capable for both front-end and back-end needs. 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

Has built-in unittest module

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

Common Lisp

Top Pro

Entire language designed strongly with metaprogramming in mind

The code=data idea is at the very heart of the Lisp philosophy, and Common Lisp brings this to a powerful, optimised runtime. See More

WorthyDanina's Experience

Spent many years meta-programming with Lisp (and variants), writing Lisp programs to write programs in several other languages, and generating entire applications running substantial businesses. 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

PowerfulAtlacoya's Experience

It is exactly what I had been searching for my entire life. You don't wish it had a feature, you just write it as a little program. See More

Top Pro

Very Powerful REPL with SLIME

SLIME (Superior Lisp Interaction Mode for Emacs). 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

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

Racket

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

Specs

Current stable version:8.5

Platforms:Linux, Windows, OSX

Site:https://racket-lang.org

IDE Support:Extensible IDE bundled, Emacs, Vim and VSCode

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

Active community

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

Top Pro

Most advanced macro functionality

syntax-parse, macro-stepper, IDE support. Nothing else out there can compete. See More

Top Pro

Advanced IDE included

The included IDE (DrRacket) has multi-language support and advanced development facilities including the Macro Stepper and Futures Visualiser. In addition to this it has sophisticated extension facilities, with both scripts and plugins. See More

Top Pro

Free resources to Learn

Includes several free online books and great documentation. See More

Rust

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 Con

Significant time required to understand the language fully

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

Maxwell Anderson's Experience

Rust has great support for macros and many crates provide very useful and easy to use macros (Rocket, serde, etc.). See More

Specs

Current stable version:1.71.1

Platforms:Linux, MacOS X, Windows, BSD

License:MIT/Apache

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

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 Con

Very new and untested

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 Con

Asynchronous I/O is not (yet) a part of the core language

The issue of asynchronous I/O is still being discussed as a language feature, and not yet in the implementation phase. See the RFC on GitHub here. See More

Top Pro

Built-in concurrency

Rust has built-in support for concurrency. 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

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

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 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

Ruby

Top Pro

Newbie-friendly community

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

Specs

Current stable version:2.6.0

GZipped size:15.9 MB

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ruby on Rails

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

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

Test Driven Development, #1

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

Hugely object oriented

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

Meta-programming

Meta-programming provides efficiency and freedom. 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

Essential algorithmic features

The Ruby language is equipped with the necessary features to learn the essence of algorithms. In online playground environments like ideone.com, measures have been taken to prevent beginners from going astray by restricting the use of external libraries such as Python's NumPy and SymPy. Even in such constrained Ruby execution environments, the required features for learning algorithms are fully available. Many of the algorithms that should be learned are documented in the book "Hello Ruby: Adventures in Coding." For example, the cake serving problem in the book leads to topological sorting, which is a graph theory concept useful in project management for creating Gantt charts. To evaluate the effectiveness of algorithms with a level of complexity comparable to topological sorting, it is necessary to be able to solve mathematical computation problems up to the high school level easily. As shown in the table below, using only Ruby's standard library, it is possible to solve high school-level math problems effortlessly. However, other programming languages may not be able to perform such computations in online playground environments. To experience the superior performance of algorithms, it is important to challenge oneself by reimplementing good algorithms. Ruby's standard library includes implementations of excellent algorithms. For instance, the algorithm for solving linear equations, which has been widely known since the era of Fortran, is used within the code of SolvingLinearEquations through the "/" operator. Reimplementing code from Ruby's standard library serves as an excellent learning resource with high reusability and efficiency. The SolvingLinearEquations function mentioned above demonstrates the benefits of duck typing and forced type conversion between objects of different types in arithmetic operations. While Rust also has features like duck typing, the implementation of "forced type conversion" is still far from being realized. Mathematical Problem Type Ruby Standard Library Python Standard Library Long Integer and Fraction ✓ ✓ Long Integer and Complex Fraction ✓ ✖ Operations on Matrices with Multiple-Digit Numbers as Coefficients ✓ ✖ Solution of Integer Coefficient Systems of Equations ✓ ✖ Solution of Systems of Equations with Long Integer and Complex Fraction Coefficients ✓ ✖ Solutions of Linear Equations with Real, Fraction, Complex, and Complex Fraction　Coefficients ✓ ✖ # Title: "(1) Cake Serving Procedure Problem" require 'tsort' class Hash include TSort alias tsort_each_node each_key def tsort_each_child(node, &block) fetch(node).each(&block) end end puts 'Tasks' task_names = { 'A' => 'Arrange the plates.', 'B' => 'Set the spoons.', 'C' => 'Place the birthday cake on the table.', 'D' => 'Spread the tablecloth.' } p task_names puts 'Preceding Tasks' preceding_tasks = { 'A' => ['D'], 'B' => ['C', 'A'], 'C' => ['A', 'D'], 'D' => [] } steps = preceding_tasks.strongly_connected_components puts 'The appropriate steps are as follows:' steps.each do |task_candidates| p task_candidates.map { |task| [task, task_names[task]] } end p "#(2) Equation Solving Rule" def SolvingLinearEquations(y, a, b) x = (y - b) / a end p "(2-1) Real Solution", SolvingLinearEquations(1.0, 5, 0.5) # => 0.1 p "(2-2) Fraction Solution", SolvingLinearEquations(Rational(1, 1), Rational(5, 1), Rational(1, 2)) # => (1/10) p "(2-3) Imaginary Solution", SolvingLinearEquations(1 + 1i, 5, 1.0 / (2 + 2i)) # => (0.15+0.25i) p "(2-4) Complex & Fraction Solution", SolvingLinearEquations(Rational(1 + 1i, 1), Rational(5, 1), Rational(1, 2 + 2i)) # => ((3/20)+(1/4)*i) p "(2-5) Matrix Solution with Large Integers", SolvingLinearEquations(Matrix[[Rational(1234567890123456789890, 1), Rational(0, 1)]], Matrix[[Rational(1234567890123456789890, 1), Rational(1234567890123456789890 * 2, 1)], [Rational(1234567890123456789890, 1), Rational(1234567890123456789890 * 3, 1)]], Matrix[[Rational(1234567890, 1), Rational(123456789, 1)]] ) # => Matrix[[(3703703670366790122789/1234567890123456789890), (-2469135780244567900789/1234567890123456789890)]] p "(2-7) Matrix Solution with Large Integers, Complex Numbers, and Fractions", SolvingLinearEquations(Matrix[[Rational(1234567890123456789890, 1i), Rational(0, 1)]], Matrix[[Rational(1234567890123456789890, 1), Rational(1234567890123456789890 * 2, 1i)], [Rational(1234567890123456789890, 1), Rational(1234567890123456789890 * 3, 1i)]], Matrix[[1234567890, 0 + 1i]] ) # => Matrix[[((-3703703671/1234567890123456789890)-(3/1)*i), ((2469135781/1234567890123456789890)+(2/1)*i)]] See More

Top Pro

No indentation

No indentation increase development efficiency. See More

Python

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

No macros

Specs

Current stable version:3.9.1

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

GZipped size:22.5MB

Typing discipline:Dynamically typed

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

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

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

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. 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

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

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

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

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 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. 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

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

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

Speed can matter

Python, like many interpreted and untyped languages, is fairly slow compared to compiled languages like C, C++ or Java. Sometimes this won't matter, but when it does you're talking about twenty times slower than C/C++ and ten times slowed than Java. 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

Unflexible userbase

You will be expected to rigidly stick to the coding practices and to do everything by-the-numbers. 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 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. 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

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

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

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

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

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

Import Turtle

Do something visually interesting in minutes by using the turtle standard library package. 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 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 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 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 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 Pro

It's really simple

It's very simple for understanding how programming works. 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

Elixir

Top Pro

Types don't get in the way

Gradual typing is a wonderful middle-ground for those who like dynamic languages but see the value of typing. See More

Specs

Current stable version:1.11.2

Site:https://elixir-lang.org

GZipped size:3.61 MB (without required Erlang VM)

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

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

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

Powerful metaprogramming

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

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 Pro

Great for concurrency

Leverages the existing Erlang BEAM VM 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

Raku

Top Pro

Introspection into objects and meta-objects

Specs

Current stable version:6.d (language), Rakudo 2020.09 (implementation)

Notes:changed its name to Raku in 2019

Type system:gradual

Top Pro

Methods can be mixed into any instantiated object at runtime

e.g., to allow adding out-of-band data. See More

Top Pro

Custom operators

Adding a custom operator or adding a trait is as simple as writing a subroutine. See More

Top Pro

Allows to execute code at any time during parsing of a grammar, or when a certain match occurred

Top Pro

Is a very mutable language

You can define your own functions, operators, traits and data-types, which modify the parser for you. See More

Top Pro

Extensible grammars for parsing data or code

Which Perl 6 uses to parse itself. See More

Top Pro

Meta Object Protocol allowing for meta-programming without needing to generate / parse code

TypeScript

Specs

Current stable version:3.7

IDE Support:Very good

C

Top Con

Requires memory management

Learning programming is already hard enough when you don't have to worry about memory leaks. See More

Top Pro

Understanding of computers

Learning C forces you to grapple with the low-level workings of your computer (memory management, pointers, etc.) in ways that the other languages abstract away. Without an understanding of these low-level aspects of computer programming you will be limited if you try to develop an application that needs to run in a memory or performance constrained environment. Other languages like Python can obscure a lot of details, so your foundation may be weaker. See More

Specs

Current stable version:C'18

Typing discipline:static

Language type:imperative, ALGOL family

Paradigm:imperative

Top Con

Low-level

Depending on the purpose this can be either a pro or a con. If the task is to learn how to program, low-level of C will impend learning important concepts. Furthermore, C is rather limited in ways of building abstractions. "Low-levelness" of C can be a pro feature in learning system programming. See More

Top Pro

Industry standard

C is the industry standard programming language, moreover, it is the most popular programming language to use. C is the language used for most Windows, UNIX and Mac operating systems. See More

Top Con

Heavily outdated programming concepts

C lacks a large majority of programming concepts that modern languages make use of today. The existing functionality of C makes use of outdated and deprecated methodologies which can be of great annoyance to the modern day programmer. See More

Top Pro

Helps with learning other languages later

A lot of languages used in the industry have a C-like syntax (C++, Java, Javascript, C#, PHP) and starting with C will help new developers to be familiar with it's syntax and by extensions with the syntax of many popular languages. See More

Top Pro

Must-have

Capability to program in C is greatly appreciated in developers, creates an image of competency, and many programmers will learn it at some point in their careers. See More

Top Pro

Portable

C is portable between most hardware. Generally a C compiler is made for any new architecture, and already exists for existing architectures. C is portable between all operating systems (Windows, UNIX, Mac, etc.) and only needs a program to be recompiled to work. This allows anyone on any operating system to learn about the language and not be held back by intricacies of their operating system. With this said, C's portability these days is not quite what it used to be. Much of said portability relies on the POSIX standard in particular, and as time passes, the compliance of a given system with that standard is becoming less certain; especially in the case of Linux. Most things will still be portable (or at least emulatable) between Windows, Linux, and FreeBSD for example; but you will at times need to make use of platform-specific support libraries and APIs as well. See More

Top Pro

Low level of abstraction

While higher level languages languages like Java and Python provide possibilities to be "more expressive" per line of code, it's much more convenient to start with "less efficient" (get me right) language, in order to get initial concepts of how things behave at lower level. Actually C is a good starting point moving to both higher and lower levels of abstraction, the good example here would be learning C before Assembler, as for general use the Assembler quite hard to understand due to low level of its abstraction (like getting the understanding on how loops work in C before trying to implement them on Assembler). See More

Top Pro

Teaches good practices

Writing in C will require you to understand how things are done. C implies using and understanding the fundamentals. Learning a higher-level language after is much easier. See More

Top Pro

More control over the code

Top Pro

Easy to drop down to assembly.

Sometimes you really need to program directly in assembly. C’s ABI and common compiler extensions make this a piece of cake. See More

Top Pro

Portable between CPU architectures

C was designed to be independent of any particular machine architecture, and so with a little care, it is easy to write "portable" programs (see here). By design, C provides constructs that map efficiently to typical machine instructions, and therefore it has found lasting use in applications that had formerly been coded in assembly language like operating systems or small embedded systems. See More

Top Pro

Basic concepts can be applied to accelerate learning any other language

You can easily pivot knowledge learned here and apply it to almost every other language. See More

Top Pro

C is simple with lesser rules than any other language

C is standardized and it is the goto language when you have to speed things up See More

Top Pro

The king of languages, imitated, extended but never equalled

Made of a small set of keywords and rules, only your imagination is the limit. Above all, when it comes to 'pro' programming, C is the only one to rely on. See More

Top Pro

If you can't grok C you should not be a professional programmer

It sets an early bar that if you can't hurdle you might as well do something other than programming and not waste any more of your time. See More

OCaml

Top Pro

Stable syntax

The syntax is consistent, some syntactic sugar but at a reasonable level, so reading the code of others isn't too confusing. See More

Specs

Current stable version:4.0.7

Site:http://ocaml.org

License:LGPL version 2.1

Price:Open source (Free)

Top Pro

Strong editor integration

The merlin editor tool provides all you need to develop OCaml in your favourite editor. See More

Top Pro

One of the best for writing compilers

OCaml is compiled to native binary, so it's amazingly fast. Being a member of ML-family languages, it has expressive syntax for trees, and has great LLVM support. See More

Top Pro

Sophisticated and easy-to-use package manager

OPAM is a package manager for OCaml, which is really easy to use, just like npm. It creates a .opam folder in home directory. The documentation is great as well, and you can switch between multiple versions of OCaml for each project. You can also package your project and publish it on OPAM repositories, even if the dependencies do not exists on OPAM. See More

Top Pro

Actively-developed functional programming language at the forefront of research

Functional programming is based on the lambda calculus. OCaml is in its functional parts almost pure lambda calculus, in a very practical manner: useful for many daily programming tasks. The acitve development makes improvements to the type system like generalized algebraic data types (GADT) or polymorphic variants, so when learning this language you get at once a down to earth usable compiler and advanced abstraction features. See More

Top Pro

Encourages functional style

It steers you towards a functional style, but doesn't bother you with purity and "monads everywhere" like other languages, such as Haskell. See More

D

Top Pro

Compile-time Function Execution

Top Con

Poor adoption even after many years of existence

There's a widely accepted perception of D as a language that has been poorly adopted. Since adoption is driven by perception this becomes a fact. So managers and engineers start becoming nervous in adopting a language that has such a perception among the community and that has been so unsuccessful for so long. See More

Specs

Current stable version:2.101.2

Site:https://dlang.org/

Top Pro

Easy to read and understand code

Top Pro

Templates can take alias parameters of any data type

Top Pro

Static if & introspection

Great, powerful compile-time tests to turn on a block of code, including declaring symbols that can be read outside 'static if'. See More

Template Haskell

Top Pro

Same language for macros and runtime

Unlike in e.g. Python or C++, the template part doesn't use different syntax from the main language, just a particular library and the splice / Oxford-bracket separators to indicate what is supposed to be done at compile time and what at runtime. See More

Justus Sagemüller's Experience

Although Haskell itself is a static language with no support for classical metaprogramming, GHC can run any Haskell code as Template Haskell during compile-time. Thus, you get almost as poweful macro capabilities as in a Lisp, while still retaining the safety net of the static type checker, which greatly reduces the risk of a macro-heavy programming style. See More

Cyan

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