What are the best compiled programming languages?

Question

DevelopmentDeveloper ToolsProgrammingProgramming Language

What are the best compiled programming languages?

20

Options
Considered

690

User
Recs.

Jan 30, 2024

Last
Updated

19 Options Considered

Best compiled programming languages	Price	Current stable version	Paradigm
65 C	FREE	C'18	imperative
57 V	Free & Open Source	-	Multi-paradigm: procedural, object-oriented, concurrent
57 Go	Free	1.21.0	-
-- Free Pascal	Free	-	-
55 Rust	Free	1.71.1	-

See Full List

score 28 · Answer 1

C

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

Top Con

Long learning curve

While the language compliments knowledge of computer components very well, and gives a deeper understanding, it is also quite difficult to learn, and to use correctly, especially without aforementioned knowledge. See More

DecisiveBuarainech's Experience

C compiles very, very quickly See More

Specs

Current stable version:C'18

Paradigm:imperative

Typing discipline:static

Language type:imperative, ALGOL family

See All Specs

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 Con

Requires memory management

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

Languages is full of corner cases and undefined behaviors

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. These serve to frustrate novice programmers when they could be learning other concepts. 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 Con

Other languages can do it easier or better

There are languages like Rust, Object Pascal, D, Golang, Vlang, Odin, Zig, Jai, etc... that can be used instead. The other languages are easier to understand, use, and/or about as fast. 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

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

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

Top Con

C will require you to learn concepts too advanced for most beginners

While other programmers will learn algorithms and structures and will do magic tricks and awesome applications, you will learn trash info that you should know maybe after 5-7 years experience in software development, not earlier. It's like going the first time as a seven year old kid to first school class, and your teacher tells you to learn you about Discrete Math, without basic math and how to do 2x2. If you wish to be a really good programmer, C for sure will be in your portfolio, but not as a first language, and this programming language is used only for very hard and very limited tools which require a lot of professional skills from the programmer. See More

Top Pro

Ubiquitous

There is a C compiler available for probably every computer system in existence today. See More

Top Con

Lack of support for first class strings

C does not support the string type, nor does it support UTF-8 strings that modern languages are employing today. Instead of strings, C makes use of the char * type which is an array of characters, and uses a NULL character as a sentinel value. See More

Top Pro

More control over the code

Top Con

Compiles procedurally rather than intelligently

In the same manner that C recursively compiles header files ad infinitum without any sort of dependency checking, C source code is also compiled in the same manner. If you attempt to call a function before it is declared, the compiler will fail because the function was not compiled before it was caled. See More

Top Pro

Low level langauge

Top Con

Undefined behaviors and weak limited type safety

Subtle errors can render the entire program "undefined" by the complicated C standard. The standard imposes no requirements in such cases. Thus C compiler is 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? 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 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 Con

Many newer alternatives now

A person doesn't have to suffer through the quirkiness any more. There are languages like D, Rust, Odin, Vlang, Zig... to take the pain away. 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 Con

Language is full of corner cases and undefined behaviors

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. These serve to frustrate novice programmers when they could be learning other concepts. See More

Top Pro

Compiles quickly and runs quickly, even with large programs

Although that a hello world program in Swift or C++ may be fast, larger programs execute more slowly, unlike C. See More

Top Con

Completely lacks type safety

The C standard library is not type safe, and the language itself does not promote type safety built into the language, which leads to error-proneness of the language. If anything, it would be recommended that those interested in C to instead put their time in D, which actually includes a complete copy of the C standard library rewritten to be fully type safe. 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 Con

Does not support modules; header file annoyances

Header files are a poor man's implementation of modules. Modern programming languages make use of modules which eliminate the need for C includes and header files and the many issues caused by them, such as the complete lack of dependency checking. Header files often contain even more include statements that point to other header files which also point to even more which drastically increases compile time. Modules only have to be compiled once, and when importing those modules into your software project, you only have to pull in the module that you are using, which is often times already precompiled. This way, the compiler knows exactly what it needs before beginning to compile your project and can automatically compile the few dependencies it needs in advance rather than recursively compiling every header file it runs across as in C. See More

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 Con

Isn't truly portable or cross platform

The C programming language is not portable to other operating systems, and even different compilers, because the C language does not provide any reference cross platform libraries or compilers. Different platforms and compilers provide their own implementation of the C standard library which may not be compatible with the implementation in another compiler or platform. Without cross platform libraries and tools, one cannot state that C is portable. This is in stark contrast to modern programming languages that provide their own cross platform libraries and compilers, such as D, Go and Rust. 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

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

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

See All

score 80 · Answer 2

V

Top Pro

Fast as C

V is easier than C and fast like C. See More

Top Con

Beta stage

Can help by joining V team. Contributors wanted. See More

TruthfulKunapipi's Experience

Vlang with around a hundred releases (https://github.com/vlang/v/releases) is clearly not vaporware or a con. Slant is allowing lies, disinformation, defamation by competitors against the author. The language has hundreds of contributors and a book written on it (https://www.packtpub.com/product/getting-started-with-v-programming/9781839213434). See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, Linux, Mac

Site:vlang.io, https://github.com/vlang

License:MIT

Developer:Alexander Medvednikov

See All Specs

Top Pro

Simplicity

V is simple and powerful. See More

Top Con

Vaporware

See more here. See More

Razor's Experience

Very promising newer programming language. Can cross-compile and build GUI apps for different OSes. Has generics, sumtypes, embeddable structs that can be assigned methods, concurrency, etc... See More

Top Pro

Cross-platform

Works on multiple OSes. See More

Top Con

Highly questionable "Fake it till you make it" marketing

Large parts of what they describe as their "key features" on their website is actually goals, not something they currently deliver. It's also something they never will deliver, because it's impossible to do so. The goals themselves are hyped and unrealistic, and until they have a working prototype delivering the claims (which is largely considered to be impossible by the community), the claims are just lies. See More

CheerfulSerapis's Experience

Dependency on C compiler. Errors errors everywhere. (Website) Full of lies. See More

Top Pro

Clear syntax

Highly understandable language. See More

Top Con

Unclear how it manages memory

They do not state clearly how memory is managed - manually like in C/C++, garbage collector, owner-based like in Rust. See More

AffableHobnil's Experience

Vlang got the jealous haters going crazy, because its so good at such an early age of development. Very comfortable and easy language to use, and recommend it. Community is also welcoming of contributors and developers to join the team. See More

Top Pro

Generics

V has generics. See More

Top Con

No control due to oversimplification

Requires going through their documentation and applying that knowledge to get the control that is desired. See More

IntellectualBanaitja's Experience

so far so good See More

Top Pro

Fast compile time

V has the fastest compile time over many of major languages. See More

Top Con

V 1.0 release was planned for December 2019

V has developed faster than many others and now is in beta. Developers wishing to contribute to development are welcomed into the community. See More

JollyAtabyrius's Experience

It mostly doesn't work, and when it does, it is horribly inefficient. See More

Top Pro

Sum types

V has sum types. See More

Top Con

No method overloading

Uses sum types, like functional languages, and also uses interfaces. See More

Top Pro

Safety

No null No global variables No undefined values No undefined behavior No variable shadowing Bounds checking Option/Result types Generics wip Immutable variables by default Pure functions by default Immutable structs by default See More

Top Con

Strings are simple byte arrays

Requires actually reading the documentation, so that one would know the difference between a string and a rune (which many other modern languages have similar). For example, when trying to get the length of a string (ASCII), use "str_var.len". When getting the length of a rune (Unicode/U32), use "rune_var.len_utf8()". You can also convert a rune into an array (rune_var.bytes()), to then act on each rune (like with a for loop). See More

Top Pro

Concurrency

Easy to run various functions concurrently in different threads. See More

Top Con

The author of the language is an expert con artist

The only reason Vlang has any kind of funding is that it has a lot of dummy repositories that promise a lot of performance to the user (like Gitly, UI, Vinix, Viscord, Vbrowser, DOOM written in V, gg ...), when there is nothing to deliver in the first place. The author of V has a history of overpromising things, has claimed that the language has insane features when it didn't. Having a plain look at their README will give the right idea for someone with programming experience. See More

Top Pro

High readability

Easier to read and understand language. See More

Top Pro

C interop

Can import C libraries, structs, and header files. See More

Top Pro

Closures

V has closures, which gives the user additional options and usefulness. See More

Top Pro

Can create multi-OS GUIs

Create multi-OS GUIs . GUI creation is more integrated into the language than others. See More

Top Pro

Supports concurrency and channels

Can run functions concurrently that communicate over channels. See More

Top Pro

Does OO without class-based OOP

Does a more generalized version of Object Oriented programming, like Golang, using embeddable structs, by assigning methods, and using interfaces. This way of OO is easier to understand, troubleshoot, and track. See More

Top Pro

Fast compile times

Compiles programs fast, less waiting around, so more productive and fun. See More

Top Pro

C Interop

Can import C libraries, structs, and headers. See More

Top Pro

Inline assembly

Can add in Assembly code if want to. See More

Top Pro

Single paradigm

Follows the philosophy that there should be only one way to do something, as opposed to multi-paradigm languages like C++. See More

Top Pro

Friendly and helpful community

Just check the V Discord channel or their GitHub Discussions and you will see by yourself. See More

See All

score 46 · Answer 3

Go

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

Golang controlled by Google

Solves Google problems, which might not be your or the majority of user's problems. Was created for the benefit and purposes of Google, so is less flexible in language direction and options. See More

MotivatedMegaera's Experience

Google has shown world it can't be trusted. Uses monopoly-like power to inhibit, choke out, and crush other and better programming languages and competition. Is causing harm and evil to the world. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, Linux, Mac etc.

Current stable version:1.21.0

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

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 {the Go engineering team consists mostly of network engineers). In a world dominated by Java EE and slow scripting languages, Go was a breath of fresh air. 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

RickZeeland's Experience

Great for backend development, network services and multi-threading. Used by well known products like Docker, CockroachDb, Hugo, OpenShift and Gitea. See More

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

Forces K&R style and won't allow Allman style

Golang developers were extremely short-sighted and biased by forcing the K&R style, which should never have happened. Basically kicking Allman style users out of their languages. See More

PioneeringTapio's Experience

fast and easy 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

Doesn't have true enums

Golang does weirdness with const versus having real enums, like other languages. This reflects the stubbornness and shortsightedness of the core developers, similar to the issue with generics, where it was denied that it was needed until it became too obvious that it should have been added years ago. See More

ArtisticLampsace's Experience

Excellent language! 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

Top Con

Does not have sum types

Makes it harder to have functions of different parameters types in a non OOP language. Thus messy generics and interfaces, and more confusion, where sum types could have solved a number of issues. See More

Top Pro

Does OO without class-based OOP

Does a more generalized version of Object Oriented programming by use of embeddable structs, assigning methods, and using interfaces. Golang's way of OO is easier to understand, troubleshoot, and track. See More

Top Con

Ugly syntax

Depends on preferences. Many love it, some don't. But still better looking than Python, who might be the some that don't. 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 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

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 Con

Bizarre syntactic choices like a unique date format

Top Pro

Automatically generates API documentation for installed packages

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

Top Con

It appears Google uses position to snuff out or suppress other languages

Newer languages that could threaten Golang (or other Google controlled languages) appear to have suppressed search results on Google and YouTube. Dangerous situation where large company can manipulate user choice and market share. The freedom to freely choose and user rights need to be protected from corporate interests. 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 Con

Lacks support for immutable data

Only way to prevent something from being mutated is to make copies of it, and to be very careful to not mutate it. 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

Nil was an obvious avoidable mistake

Null/Nil has long been known as the "billion-dollar mistake". Golang creators should have known better to not repeat it. In Golang, nil can cause: 1) Panics which may crash programs 2) Cause confusion, because nil is default for some types, but not others 3) Sometimes nil isn't even equal to nil for error handling 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

No built-in Map, Filter, or Reduce

Must use 3rd party libraries for features other languages have by default. Golang "owners" are too stubborn and set in their ways. See More

Top Pro

VS Code extension

A Visual Studio Code extension for Go is available. 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

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 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

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 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

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 Con

Changing visibility requires renaming all over the code

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 it's 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

Ace condition detection only works after a race condition has occurred

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 Con

Runtime safety promises are misleading

Go can fail when you least expect due to complications caused by metaprogramming and operator overloading. See More

Top Pro

Strong type system

Top Con

Bizarre syntactic choices in common features like dates.

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 Con

No forms designer

Some people, especially the ones developing in Visual Studio, are used to the luxury of forms for rapid development. However there are some libraries for building GUI Applications and libraries for forms. 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

See All

score 39 · Answer 4

Free Pascal

Top Pro

Cross platform

Many target platforms and architectures. See More

Top Con

Almost obsolete

Look up at how obsolete and non existent these Object Pascal dialects and companies are: Delphi (Embarcadero), Free Pascal/Lazarus, or Oxygene (RemObjects). See More

ReliableFodla's Experience

After spending decades using languages such as Basic, Fortran, C, and C++, and dabbling in Java and Python, I switched to Free Pascal/Lazarus about 9 years ago. It is in active development with a strong community, and is probably the top environment for cross-platform desktop development. The death of a language that has continuously evolved for over 50 years is a rumor that is greatly exaggerated. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, Linux, Mac

Top Pro

Fast compiler

Very fast, even big programs compile very quickly. See More

CredibleEurybia's Experience

Strong typing is a must if you are serious about programming. See More

Top Pro

Easy to learn

Easy to understand, well structured and there are many books on the language. See More

Top Pro

Easy to build GUIs with

Great IDEs such as Delphi and Lazarus. See More

Top Pro

Powerful

Close to metal while being high level, performance to match C/C++. See More

See All

score 62 · Answer 5

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

Hard to find learning resources or libraries

Because it's still a relatively new language, Rust does not enjoy a following as large as other languages/environments. Rust development has also been rather volatile for a long time during the beginning of the development of the language adding to this issue. Because of the small community, it's harder to find useful libraries for projects or any other kind of resource. See More

ImaginativeShennong's Experience

After spending signifcant time using this language, it hits as more hype and grift (for a select few) than really useful and productive. Then there is the 'Rust Evangelism' and 'Rust Foundation', which just comes across as bananas. Rust Foundation is like a drunk dictator, trying to force what we have never seen any other language try to do: 1) Prohibit firearms at their events. 2) No using "rust" in crate names. 3) No using "rust" in product or service name. 4) No using "rust" in domain or company name. 5) No using "rust" if user group or conference makes a profit. 6) Your trademarek must be bigger than theirs on your own website. 7) Must comply with local health regulations, because they say so. Rust is a low productivity, masochistically difficult, ugly syntax, long compile time, not so safe as hype suggests language. If really out here wanting to use something besides C/C++, in 98% of use cases, would do just as well or be better off using something other than Rust. Nim, Dlang, Golang, Vlang, Zig... See More

Specs

Platforms:Linux, MacOS X, Windows, BSD

Current stable version:1.71.1

License:MIT/Apache

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

HumbleNingal's Experience

Great, if you like it real hard and can handle the initial pain. Supposedly it gets good after a while, for some. But not for everybody. 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 Con

Low readability

Harder to read and understand language. See More

DiligentHatmehit's Experience

It's annoying to have to deal with the borrow checker, but at least there's memory safety and type safety. See More

Top Pro

Built-in concurrency

Rust has built-in support for concurrency. See More

Top Con

Low productivity

The compiler is strict, such as ownership and borrowing checkers. See More

zzh's Experience

It's easy to write fast code. 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 Con

Error messages are very hard to understand

ProductiveInvidia's Experience

Allows you to write almost secure low-level code 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 Con

Long compile times

Way longer to compile than other languages. 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 Con

Very ugly and verbose syntax

Compared to many languages. One tool needed to be productive is the language to be pleasing and effective, yet rust friction is as high as its safety. 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 Con

Rust not as safe as it pretends to be

Rust problems: 1) Massive undisclosed usage of unsafe. 2) Massive amounts of memory safety CVEs - see details. 3) Large bloated Rust binaries increase attack surface for exploits. 4) Many corporate types claiming Rust is safe, don't actually program or use it (have some quiet financial interest to push it). 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

Way too much jumping through the hoops to make compiler happy

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

Binary bloat

All kinds of extra and excessive code creates fat binaries which are trouble for environments with size restrictions. See More

Top Pro

Helpful error messages

The compiler tells you exactly what's wrong, and suggests possible fixes. See More

Top Con

Steep learning curve

Pretty strict and hard to adapt for beginners. See More

Top Pro

Memory safety without a garbage collector

Have control over memory like C but have memory safety; Have extra control if you need it, otherwise, you don't have to worry about it. See More

Top Con

Not as useful or productive as advertised.

If really out here wanting to use something besides C/C++, in 98% of use cases, would do just as well or be better off using something other than Rust. Will complete the project faster, would be easier, will be happier, and nearly as safe (use newer language with optional GC). See More

Top Pro

Functional programming

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

Big community

The biggest community contributing to the language. 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

Visual Studio extension

A beta version extension. See More

Top Con

Very new and untested

See All

score 41 · Answer 6

Nim

Top Pro

Really cross-platform

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

Top Con

Case/underscore insensitive

Nim ignores underscores and uppercase letters, except on the first character of an identifier (as PascalCase is used for type names). In other words, VarX and var_x are the same variable, unless VarX is a type name. This can be a Pro, depending on perspective. See More

ReliableAsherah's Experience

Estas clasificaciones son basura. Este sitio web también es basura. Nim es la mierda del culo de un perro. See More

Specs

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

Current stable version:2.0.0

License:MIT

GZipped size:14,2 MB

See All Specs

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 Con

Memory management disasters

Will be stuck with bad performance while choosing from all kinds of memory management options that aren't good. See More

MemorableJumis's Experience

Con artists pushing this false hype language on tricked Python addicts and on here. Nobody know this language, not even on TIOBE index. You not getting a job with this. Nobody need this language, not even for hobby, as others much better. See More

Top Pro

Multi paradigm

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

Top Con

Lacks void / null safety

Easy to get involved in safety issues. See More

DebonairAnbay's Experience

Slant's rankings are complete trash. Clearly Nim is given special treatment, where none of its CONs show on its main page. Disgusting bias and pretense, by presenting false fan rankings. Nim is a lowly player that few take serious and is of no consequence. 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 Con

Whitespace sensitive syntax

Hurts eyes and causes unnecessary errors. See More

PrudentKhepri's Experience

Nim is one of those languages that does almost everything well. Universal, fast, flexible, simple, it's all about nim. 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 Con

Concurrency hard to use

Difficult to use, too verbose. See More

ThriftyVacuna's Experience

Nim is a visually clean, high productivity and efficient language. Being statically typed, with a fast compilation time, easy to write and read, and with powerful meta-programming capabilities, Nim is perhaps the best language for the cybersecurity. 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 Con

You won't get a job programming Nim

It's not a mainstream language. See More

ExpertPistis's Experience

Es un buen lenguaje para todos aquellos que estaban empezando ese puede desarrollar casi cualquier tipo de software tiene una sintaxis muy legible lo recomiendo mucho realmente es un lenguaje de programacion extraordinarios y otro temas es que puede importar librería de C, C++,Objetive V, Javascripts etc.... See More

Top Pro

Extendable operator overloading

You can overload nearly every operator and even create new ones very easily. See More

Top Con

Jack of many trades, master of none

Doesn't excel at anything particular, and better to use other languages. 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 Con

Generates unreadable bloated C code

Defeats the purpose, with unreadable bloated C. See More

Top Pro

Type inference

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 Con

Atrocious error messages

Unhelpful to users, wasting hours deciphering and extremely annoying. See More

Top Pro

Compiles to C or Javascript

When compiling to C the performance capabilities are those of C. And compiling to javascript makes Nim a worthy tool for web development. See More

Top Con

Failed wannabe Python knockoff language

Created in 2008, Nim has failed to make TIOBE top 100 or PYPL rankings for programming languages. Pythoners can use alternatives like Cython or the Codon compiler for a more Python-like experience. 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 Con

Inconsistent name formatting

Headache creation with snake_case, pascalCase, and being case-insensitive too. See More

Top Pro

Strict typing

Checks your code at compile time. See More

Top Con

No tab characters are supported

Always spaces need to be used. That way different indentation preferences are not supported without reformatting the code. 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 Con

Con artist pushed useless language

False hype con artist language pushed by tricking Python users. Nobody need this language, not even on TIOBE index top 100 list, but it came out 2008. You not get job knowing Nim. Bad for even hobby, others much better to learn and use. 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

Has built-in async support

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

See All

score 11 · Answer 7

Zig

Top Pro

Performance

Zig is pretty fast, in some cases even faster than C. See More

Top Con

No lambdas

Too limiting, when no lambdas combined with other lack of features. See More

ResourcefulShala's Experience

Say no to Zig, avoid getting scammed. Why do we keep seeing an overhyped unfinished alpha level language showing up everywhere? That answer looks like a financial incentive to promote the language, the Zig Software Foundation, that is making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year from donations. To aggressively maintain cash flow, it appears any opinions that goes against their narrative is suppressed, attacked, or eliminated. All while the hype machine runs rampant. That isn't a language for the people, that looks to be a cash grab for the few that will result in nothing useful. Save yourself the headache and games, better to just use C or other languages with C-like syntax, can interface with C, and are actually useful. Better to not waste your valuable time on crap like Zig, false media hype, or getting scammed. ”If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.” This blog has published 2 excellent articles on how Zig's claims do not live up to reality after more than 6 years of development. https://mikefsn.github.io/2022/10/18/goodbye-zig.html https://mikefsn.github.io/2022/10/22/how-the-zig-team-pushes-a-narrative.html See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, Mac, Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Android, iOS

Current stable version:0.11.0

Site:https://ziglang.org/

License:MIT

See All Specs

Top Pro

C Interop

Zig programs can import C libraries and export header files to be used in C programs. See More

Top Con

No interfaces/traits

Features that are useful are missing, where you can find them in other languages. See More

Top Pro

Control flow is simple and obvious

No operator overloading, property methods, runtime dispatch, macros, etc. See More

Top Con

No closures

Does not have closures. See More

Top Pro

Compile-time execution

Zig can execute code at compile-time, allowing for more performant and readable programs. See More

Top Con

Convoluted syntax

Claims to be as easy as C, but has totally failed in this regard. Better to go use C. See More

Top Pro

Some safety

It's safer than C, at least. See More

Top Con

Verbose typing

It requires writing long and verbose casts from types. This is supposed to protect from type cast pitfalls like in C/C++, but also complicates programming. Type names also can be very long. See More

Top Pro

Small binary

Produces binary smaller than C. See More

Top Con

Deceptively gives impression it's near being production ready

No plans to hit 1.0 until 2025 (3 years later), according to Zig Roadmap speech. Impression is given (0.9.1) that language was close to ready, when it's not. See More

Top Pro

No hidden control flow

Zig will not do anything on your back that might slow down your program & make you loose your control over your program. See More

Top Con

Exhibits cult-like behavior and animosity towards other programming languages

Strange culture that bashes other languages and are not open to criticism about the faults of their language. Very close-minded, sometimes scary. See More

Top Pro

Cross-compilation is easy

The Zig compiler can build artifacts for any Tier 3 Supported platform without additional downloads. See More

Top Con

Fundraising looks suspicious

Why do we keep seeing an overhyped unfinished alpha level language showing up everywhere? That answer looks like a financial incentive to promote the language, the Zig Software Foundation, that is making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year from donations. To aggressively maintain cash flow, it appears any opinions that goes against their narrative is suppressed, attacked, or eliminated. All while the hype machine runs rampant. That isn't a language for the people, that looks to be a cash grab for the few that will result in nothing useful. Save yourself the headache and games, better to just use C or other languages with C-like syntax, can interface with C, and are actually useful. Better to not waste your valuable time on crap like Zig, false media hype, or getting scammed. ”If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.” This blog has published 2 excellent articles on how Zig's claims do not live up to reality after more than 6 years of development. Article 1 Article 2 See More

Top Pro

Sublime error handling

Zig provides several error handling facilities out of the box, which make handling potential errors (file not found, etc) much easier and much less cluttering than usual. See More

Top Con

Creator admits to not being smart and not knowing what he's doing

Creator admits his shortcomings during Zig Roadmap speech. Very disturbing. Not a language to invest in or take seriously, outside personal experimentation. See More

Top Con

Almost no community

Instead of a true community, it seems to use a progranda and grift machine to suck down corporate donations for tax write offs to enrich the pockets of a few on the core team. Nearly unuseable mess of a product with little purpose. See More

Top Con

Should not be a compiled langauge

Despite its promising features this should firmly be in the live/scripting space. See More

See All

score 27 · Answer 8

D

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

Top Pro

Supports calling functions from types in an object-oriented manner

if (exists(file)) {} may be written as if (file.exists) {}. writeln(file); may be written as file.writeln(); isDivisibleBy(10, 2); may be written as 10.isDivisibleBy(2); writeln(isEven(add(5, 5))); may be written as 5.add(5).isEven().writeln(); See More

WittyPhraPhrom's Experience

more than 20 years of C programming See More

Specs

Current stable version:2.101.2

Site:https://dlang.org/

Top Con

Lack of vision

D is community-driven and lacks the support of any large corporation. While this increases the amount of talent and engineering abilities of the people working on D, it also brings a severe lack of charisma, leadership and vision. See More

Top Pro

Doesn't force you to deal with memory management

When you're just starting out, dealing with manual memory management and its bugs is a huge pain! D is garbage collected by default, which removes a huge class of things that could go wrong. And later on, if you decide you don't want or need the GC, you can turn it off. See More

prohyon's Experience

Very fast than all c++ competitors. The real sucessor of C and C++ See More

Top Con

All the downsides of garbage collection without any of its benefits

When D decided to implement garbage collection it instantly alienated a large community of developers (C and C++ programmers). For them, the official policy has been: "Don't want garbage collection? Use D with RAII or manual management style!". While true, it's also absolutely pointless because there's little to none support for alternate memory management styles in the standard library, which means that a new user will have to start with a language that is stripped down of the core infrastructure. On the other hand, for those people who want to use garbage collection, the implementation of it is lackluster. See More

Top Pro

Very fast compilation

D is usually up to 10 times faster than C++. Having a language that compiles this fast means that you are free to write highly optimized code because of the relatively low cost of experimentation. See More

DiligentHatmehit's Experience

Way too complex. See More

Top Con

Way too complex

Top Pro

Unit testing built-in

D provides unittest blocks to insert code that verifies functions preform their expected behavior and document edge cases. Since these are enabled with a compiler switch, there is no need to teach new programmers how to install new libraries and import modules, instead training on test driven design can start from the very first function. See More

FascinatingPicus's Experience

Better than c++ See More

Top Con

Failed at becoming alternative to C or C++

Almost as confused and complicated as C++, but without the popularity and widespread corporate usage. Also failed at becoming a good cross-platform GUI application development language like Object Pascal. Many missed past opportunities, and now newer languages are better alternatives. See More

Top Pro

Has a good package manager, dub

ProductiveIntercidona's Experience

easy to get started with, very well designed, fast compilation and came close to C++ and C in term of performance See More

Top Pro

Easy to read and understand code

Top Pro

Compile-time Function Execution

Top Pro

Provides a powerful data structure on top of C's arrays called slices

D provides a structure that builds on C's arrays called slices. A slice is a segment of an array that tracks the pointer and the length of the segment. Slices are extremely powerful because they combine the protection of knowing the length of the data with the garbage collector that manages the memory backing that data, thus avoiding most memory corruption issues. See More

Top Pro

Static with type inference

For a new user adding types can feel tedious, and takes focus off the meaning of the code, but they are also important for checking logic. D provides static types, and a good system to infer types, so types are checked when calling functions, but do not need to be specified everywhere, making it feel more dynamic. See More

Top Pro

Built-in Unicode support

Top Pro

Has an improved C subset

With few exceptions, D will either compile C code to work exactly as when compiled as C, or it won't compile - it won't quietly change the semantics of C code and give unexpected results. This means that D contains an improved C, as it fails compilation where type safety is missing in C. This allows learning the same machine operations available in C and other low-level languages. See More

Top Pro

Easy to integrate with C and C++

D practically has the same memory structure as C and C++; all D does it build a structure around that. The entire C standard library is accessible at no cost (syntactic or speed) and it's being worked on allowing the same for the C++ standard library. See More

Top Pro

Supports calling functions from types in an object-oriented manner.

if (exists(file)) {} may be written as if (file.exists) {}. writeln(file); may be written as file.writeln(); isDivisibleBy(10, 2); may be written as 10.isDivisibleBy(2); writeln(isEven(add(5, 5))); may be written as 5.add(5).isEven().writeln(); See More

Top Pro

Asynchronous I/O that doesn’t get in your way

Because all types can be treated as objects, all files can call functions in the same manner -- even stdin and stdout. stdout.writeln(); stdin.readln(); file.writeln(); file.readln(); See More

Top Pro

Provable purity and immutability

The compiler can check that functions don't have side effects, extremely important for functional programming in concurrent scenarios, and can check immutability. Therefore, the compiler will prove that your programs are functionally pure and respect immutable data, if you want it to. See More

Top Pro

Designed for concurrency and parallelism

Supports first-class functionality for both concurrency and parallelism, offered as part of the standard library. See More

Top Pro

It's a state-of-the-art evolution of C

Top Pro

Industrial quality

Top Pro

A pragmatic evolution of C without the bloat and confusion of C++

D is designed to be efficient and practical, leaving out features that encourage bad design, and updating functionality to prevent common problems. See More

See All

score 7 · Answer 9

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

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

ThriftyVacuna's Experience

Elixir is a real joy to program in. The actor-based concurrency model is easy to reason about. 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

Great for concurrency

Leverages the existing Erlang BEAM VM. See More

Top Con

Deployment is still not as easy as it should be

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

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

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

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

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

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

See All

score 11 · Answer 10

Elm

Top Pro

Easy to code review

The lack of side-effects and simple, consistent language semantics make it easy to quickly review incoming changes. See More

Top Con

Functional programming itself has quite a steep learning curve

Functional programming can be quite difficult to get your head around. It takes time to unlearn object orientational habits. See More

Jared M. Smith's Experience

Writing Elm makes me a better developer overall. I can apply the principles of Elm to other programming environments. My refactorings are always confident. Programming is enjoyable again! See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows Linux Mac Web

Current stable version:0.19.1

GZipped size:23.2 kB

Top Pro

Inferred static typing

ML static typing is great because it's always there, you just choose how explicit you want to be and how much you want the compiler to do. See More

Top Con

Community harsh if criticised

If one even dares to start a discussion about a feature on elms slack, discord, subreddit or github one will be aggressively shut down often arguing that one should use purescript instead. See More

Top Pro

Batteries included

The Elm Architecture means you don't need to spend valuable time and effort choosing the right frameworks, state management libraries, or build tooling. It's all built in. See More

Top Con

Features get removed without warning

Often features that are deemed to be misused by the community like infix operators get removed without much of a warning. See More

Top Pro

Super easy refactoring with very helpful compiler errors

In no other language you can refactor so easy without any worries, since the compiler will guide you through. It is like TDD but than compiler-error driven. See More

Top Con

Updates break existing code often

The last few updates of elm broke existing code in major ways. See More

Top Pro

Not quite Haskell semantics

Luckily you do not have to learn Haskell to be able to do any Elm. It is meant to be a language that compiles to Javascript, so for Javascript programmers (Front end) not for CS students who want to learn as many different algorithms as possible. See More

Top Con

Poor Windows support

Few if any of Elm's core contributors are Windows users and breaking bugs are sometimes left for weeks or months. See More

Top Pro

Great and simple way to learn Purely Functional Programming

You can try to apply some functional programming ideas in other languages that have an imperative basis, but you haven't seen the real power unless you tried it in the environment of purely functional programming. Elm is a simple language with great learning resources and easy graphical output, which makes it easy to explore the power of functional programming. Plus programming in Elm is very readable. See More

Top Con

Adds an additional layer of abstraction

Some users claim that Elm adds an additional layer of abstraction, meaning that it is one more hurdle between the brain and the product. See More

Top Pro

Static module system

Elm uses easy to use modules. Use: import List import List as L import List exposing (..) import List exposing ( map, foldl ) import Maybe exposing ( Maybe ) import Maybe exposing ( Maybe(..) ) import Maybe exposing ( Maybe(Just) ) Creation: module MyModule exposing (foo, bar) See More

Top Con

No genericness in the future

Currently there is no code genericness like typeclasses possible, it has been officially stated that this will never change. See More

Top Pro

Missing syntactic sugar

Easy to learn, most functions have only one way, not 5 alternatives where you must study where to best use what. See More

Top Con

Code repetition

Because of the lack of genericness Elm needs a lot of code to be repeated. There are 130+ implementations of map in elms core libraries. See More

Top Pro

Growing community

Top Pro

Good tooling

All major editors have great support. With Atom for example, Elm plugins are available for linting, formatting, make/compiler support and Elmjutsu will simply overflow you with super useful functions, like navigate to referenced definition and show expression type. See More

Top Pro

Interactive programming and hot swapping

Support for hot swapping and interactive programming is included. See More

Top Pro

Higher confidence in code correctness and quality

Pure functions, immutable data structures, amazing compiler, clean and homologous syntax used for HTML, logic, and optionally to replace CSS, elimination of entire classes of bugs so you don't even need most unit tests. These factors lead to better code, better programs, higher confidence, and ultimately, more satisfaction. See More

Top Pro

Designed around high-level front-end development

As Elm was designed as a front-end langauge, it has out of the box support for things like DOM-element creation, letting programmers focus on their application logic, rather than implementation details specific to the web. See More

Top Pro

No run-time exceptions

Lack of run-time exceptions makes it easy to produce large swathes of reliable front-end code without drowning in tests. See More

See All

score 4 · Answer 11

Haxe

Top Pro

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

Top Con

No Qt support

There is currently no support for Qt. See More

Specs

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

Supported languages:C++, C#, Java, Javascript, PHP, Lua, Python, Actionscript

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

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

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 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

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 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

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

See All

score 4 · Answer 12

twinBASIC

Top Pro

64bit compilation is supported

64bit compilation is supported, as well as 32bit. See More

ImaginativeHesperus's Experience

twinBASIC programming to replace VB6 See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, Linux, Mac, Android

Top Pro

Compatible with and more powerful than VB6

We've waited over 20 tears for a Visual Basic 6 replacement. See More

Top Pro

100% Backward Compatible with VB6/VBA

Any code that runs in VB6 will run in twinBASIC (once v1 is released). Code that runs in VBA will also run in twinBASIC, though you need to account for any dependencies on the host application's object model (e.g., the Excel or Access Application object). See More

Top Pro

No runtime requirement

The lack of a runtime dependency makes twinBASIC applications very lightweight and portable. Additionally, compiled executables only include necessary code from any referenced libraries. The classic "Hello, World" program compiles down to an 8 KB .exe with no external dependencies. See More

Top Pro

Compile DLLs to extend VBA functionality

Can be used to extend VBA functionality by compiling standard and ActiveX DLLs in both 32 and 64bit. See More

Top Pro

At last! a replacement for VB6

At last there is a replacement for Microsoft VB6 - and for VBA too. See More

See All

score 23 · Answer 13

Crystal

Top Con

Slow compilation

Top Pro

Elegant syntax like Ruby

JackRedstonia's Experience

Developing in Crystal is pure bliss. It maintains the perfect balance between being blazingly fast, easy to read and understand, and giving you confidence in the code you write. See More

Specs

Platforms:Linux, BSD, OSX

License:Apache v2

Developer:Ary Borenszweig, Juan Wajnerman, Brian Cardiff

Website:https://crystal-lang.org/

See All Specs

Top Con

A language only Ruby fans can love

Ruby-ish language. See More

Top Pro

Fearless concurrency

Adopts a concurrency model similar to Go and Clojure's, with coroutines and channels. See More

Top Con

Not cross-platform

No official Windows support. See More

Top Pro

Fast

Very impressive for a language with such a high abstraction level. See More

Top Con

Parallelism is still experimental

Top Pro

Compiles to native binary

Top Con

Not even remotely standard on any project

Top Pro

Has union types

Has union types which makes things easy in certain use cases and often helps avoid using reflection. See More

Top Pro

Strong typing system

See All

score 5 · Answer 14

OCaml

Top Con

Strong focus on *nix systems, lacking native support for MS Windows

Lacks native support for Windows systems. See More

Top Pro

Strong type system

Specs

Current stable version:4.0.7

Site:http://ocaml.org

License:LGPL version 2.1

OS:Linux, Windows, OSX, BSD

See All Specs

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

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

Top Pro

Stable syntax

The syntax is consistent, some syntaxic sugar but at a reasonable level, so reading code of others isn't too much confusing. 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

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

Strong editor integration

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

See All

score 2 · Answer 15

Lobster

Top Pro

Python-esque syntax

There's an audience who loves that. See More

Top Con

Python-like syntax, but different use case and domain

Not Python compatible and often significantly different in purpose and use cases. See More

HumbleNingal's Experience

Working towards being what Python, Nim, or Mojo were supposed to be. A programming language to make life easier and more fun. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, iOS

Current stable version:v2023

Site:https://github.com/aardappel/lobster

License:Apache v2

See All Specs

Top Pro

Compile time reference counting

Unlike Rust doesn't make the programmer jump through hoops, mainly automatic. Does an analysis similar to the Rust borrow checker to infer lifetimes, but makes life easier on the programmer. See More

Top Con

Small community

Lead doesn't appear to be so ambitious or has a vision to push making more popular. See More

Top Pro

Type inference algorithm

Just works. Goes further than most languages in terms of allowing code without types. See More

Top Pro

Automatic memory management

Better than Rust. No sadism. See More

Top Pro

WebAssembly backend

More options for users. See More

Top Pro

Inline structs

Structs are allocated in their parent, and come at zero overhead. See More

See All

score 3 · Answer 16

Haskell

Top Pro

Memory Safe

Top Con

Only pure functional programming

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

Specs

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

Paradigm:functional

Type System:static

Top Pro

Metaprogramming

inspection and generation of the program’s abstract syntax tree using templates that are evaluated at compile-time and automate boilerplate generation. 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

Mature and easy to use concurrency

Green threads, amazing libraries such as async and stm, and ubiquity of pure functions make writing concurrent applications in Haskell a pleasure instead of a headache. See More

Top Pro

Lazy computational evaluation saves resources.

The idea is to defer computation until the results are needed, and the consequences are ease of refactoring, the ability to define custom control structures, and improved composability. See More

Top Pro

Powerful categorical abstractions

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

Open source

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

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

See All

score 6 · Answer 17

Clojure

Top Con

Tied to the JVM and its 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

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

SpiritedAchuguayo's Experience

Really is rubbish. Community sadistically pushes terse complicated code. Esoteric language, that is unfamiliar and peculiar. Cryptic errors and craziness with nil. More of a badge to say one is using something different, but the language itself is truly without any real benefits. It's more about being in an exclusive club, and fooling those outside of it. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, Linux, Mac

Current stable version:1.10.1

Site:www.clojure.org

GZipped size:3.7Mb, requires JAVA

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

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

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

Code tends to be nightmare to maintain for non-authors

Tendency to devolve into difficult to manage mess of styles. Not recommended for professional use. 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 Con

Too cult-ish

Way too niche and in-group behavior, while trying to trash other languages. Only pays for select few, who run the "game" on others.. 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

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

Gives power to programmers

Top Pro

Dynamic language

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

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

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

Rich Hickey

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

Top Pro

No C/Java syntax

Refreshing. See More

See All

What are the best compiled programming languages?

19 Options Considered

C

My Recommendation for C

My Recommendation for C

Understanding of computers

Long learning curve

Portable

Requires memory management

Helps with learning other languages later

Languages is full of corner cases and undefined behaviors

Portable between CPU architectures

Other languages can do it easier or better

Industry standard

Low-level

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

C will require you to learn concepts too advanced for most beginners

Ubiquitous

Lack of support for first class strings

More control over the code

Compiles procedurally rather than intelligently

Low level langauge

Undefined behaviors and weak limited type safety

Teaches good practices

Many newer alternatives now

C is simple with lesser rules than any other language

Language is full of corner cases and undefined behaviors

Compiles quickly and runs quickly, even with large programs

Completely lacks type safety

Low level of abstraction

Does not support modules; header file annoyances

Easy to drop down to assembly

Isn't truly portable or cross platform

The king of languages, imitated, extended but never equalled

Must-have

Basic concepts can be applied to accelerate learning any other language

V

My Recommendation for V

My Recommendation for V

Fast as C

Beta stage

Simplicity

Vaporware

Cross-platform

Highly questionable "Fake it till you make it" marketing

Clear syntax

Unclear how it manages memory

Generics

No control due to oversimplification

Fast compile time

V 1.0 release was planned for December 2019

Sum types

No method overloading

Safety

Strings are simple byte arrays

Concurrency

The author of the language is an expert con artist

High readability

C interop

Closures

Can create multi-OS GUIs

Supports concurrency and channels

Does OO without class-based OOP

Fast compile times

C Interop

Inline assembly

Single paradigm

Friendly and helpful community

Go

My Recommendation for Go

My Recommendation for Go

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

Golang controlled by Google

Great language for building networking services

Performance slowdown because of indirect calls and garbage collection

Exceptionally simple and scalable multithreaded and concurrent programming

Forces K&R style and won't allow Allman style

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

Doesn't have true enums

Performance is on the order of C and Java