What is the best programming language to learn?

Question

DevelopmentProgramming Language

What is the best programming language to learn?

17

Options
Considered

149

User
Recs.

Jan 29, 2024

Last
Updated

17 Options Considered

Best programming language to learn	Price	Standard	Current stable version
-- Pascal / Object Pascal	-	ISO/IEC 7185:1990 Pascal and ISO/IEC 10206:1990 Extended Pascal	-
-- C	FREE	ISO/IEC 9899:2011/Cor 1:2012 or C11	C'18
-- Go	Free	-	1.21.0
-- V	Free	-	-
-- Python	Free	-	3.9.1

See Full List

Built By the Slant team

Find the best product instantly.

4.7 star rating

Try it now - it's free

score 15 · Answer 1

Pascal / Object Pascal

Top Pro

Easy GUI creation

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

Specs

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

Top Pro

Still active

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

Top Pro

Easy

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

Top Pro

Cross platform

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

Top Pro

Understanding of basics

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

Top Pro

Fast compilation

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

Top Pro

Tons of academic reading

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

Top Pro

Enforces good programming practice

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

Top Pro

Clear syntax

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

Top Pro

Incredible GUI design tools

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

Top Pro

Dynamic evolution of language

Object Pascal language still evolving and being updated by Delphi (Embarcadero) and Free Pascal team (Lazarus). See More

Top Pro

Language depth

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

Top Pro

Reliable language and code base

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

See All

score 5 · Answer 2

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

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

Specs

Current stable version:C'18

Typing discipline:static

Paradigm:imperative

Standard:ISO/IEC 9899:2011/Cor 1:2012 or C11

See All Specs

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

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

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

Requires memory management

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

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

Ubiquitous

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

Foundational, difficult but important

Learning C will teach valuable skills and transferrable understanding of computing. While learning a scripting language may be easier, students will not understand system constraints and performance problems, nor what features like garbage collection are actually doing in other 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

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 go-to language when you have to speed things up. 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 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

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

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

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

See All

score 9 · Answer 3

Go

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

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

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

Current stable version:1.21.0

Platforms:Windows, Linux, Mac etc.

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

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. 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No forms designer

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

Top Pro

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

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

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

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

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

Performance slowdown because of indirect calls and garbage collection

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

Top Pro

Built-in tooling

Go (CLI) comes with numerous built-in and well-tested utilities, such as a test framework, benchmarking tool, documentation generator, etc. 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

Google's C++ has the potential to become the defacto DataBase Driver

As of the year 2021, DataBase drivers come in two flavors: Java and C++. Moving forward, in some few years, It is expected that Database drivers will favor C# and Golang due to the influence of Microsoft and Google, and while Oracle should still any JVM language, the industry tendency is very clear: Golang is to replace C++ for databases, and in many other fields. See More

See All

score 16 · Answer 4

V

Top Pro

High readability

Easier to read and understand. 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

LoyalKratos's Experience

Vlang has around 100 releases- https://github.com/vlang/v/releases Obviously a "working prototype" was delivered (and years ago). Clearly thousands of people are using said "working prototype". They also have corporate sponsors- https://vlang.io/ (check lower on page). Quite sure the corporate sponsors are pretty confident that vlang is "delivering on claims". See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, Linux, Mac

License:MIT

Developer:Alexander Medvednikov

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

See All Specs

Top Pro

Can create multi-OS GUIs

Multi-OS GUI creation is more integrated into the language than others. 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, have 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

HilariousLibitina's Experience

Slant's moderators are allowing the public smearing of the language author and violating its own policies on personal attacks. Smearing, damaging the reputation, and spreading lies about the author is defamation, and is not about a review of the language. One of Slant's written policies: "In the interest of good debate, Slant does not allow harassment or personal attacks in any form." See More

Top Pro

Cross-platform

Compile to many OSes. See More

MightyHedetet's Experience

Vlang is a great developing language that is a joy to play with. Found the community to be welcoming and open to new contributors. There are some crazies or competitors that try to say foul things about the developers and language, but ignore them. People that actually use it, usually like it. Expecting good things from V in the years to come. See More

Top Pro

Fast like C

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

Top Pro

Clear syntax

Highly understandable language. See More

Top Pro

Safety

V is very safe. See More

Top Pro

C Interop

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

Top Pro

Closures

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

Top Pro

Supports concurrency and channels

Can run functions concurrently that communicate over channels. See More

Top Pro

Inline assembly

Can add Assembly code. See More

Top Pro

Sum types

V has Sum Types. See More

Top Pro

Generics

V has generics. See More

Top Pro

Simplicity

V is simple and powerful. See More

Top Pro

Lambdas

Supports using lambdas, which helps write more concise code without having to use so many lines. 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

Top Pro

Fast compile times

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

See All

score 7 · Answer 5

Python

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

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

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

See All Specs

Top Con

Significant whitespace

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

Top Pro

It's really simple

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

Top Con

Language fragmentation

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

Top Pro

Comes with extensive libraries

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

Top Con

Not good for mobile development

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

Top Pro

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

Worst language design ever

Instead of sticking to a certain paradigm, the original writer of the language couldn't make up his mind, and took something from everywhere, but messing it up as he went by. This is possibly one of the worst balanced languages ever. People who pollute their mind with Python and think it's the best thing since sliced bread, will have to un-learn a lot of garbage 'pythonesque' habits to actually learn how to program. It's not because the academic world uses it a lot, that it's a good language. It says something about the inability of the academic world to write decent code, actually. See More

Top Pro

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

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

Top Con

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

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

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

Bad for games

Python has a lot of frameworks like pygame, but exporting the game is hard and building files like .exe gets very large and have a bad performance on bad computers. 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

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

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

Not a serious coding language

If you consider it your first language, better pick Julia! See More

Top Pro

Supports various programming paradigms

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

Top Con

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. You need to have a plan for what you will do if it is too slow. See More

Top Pro

Easy to find jobs

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

Top Con

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

Has features of both high and low level language

It is somewhere between C and Java. See More

Top Con

Version Confusion with V2.x and V3.x

Top Pro

Cross-platform

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

Top Con

As some few years pass by, Python will be a main line scripting language only

Python most probably will remain as the defacto scripting language of the programming languages, but it won't be a technology with the level of industry usability that is presently being pushed forward to in the year 2021. Once new programmers start to discover the lack of backing from a major company, slow speed, and issues in large project maintenance, then it will be dropped in favor of more robust and large corporation backed languages such as C#, Swift, Kotlin. See More

Top Pro

Good introduction to data structures

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

Top Con

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

Hard to debug other people's code

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

Top Pro

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 Pro

Mobile versions

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

Top Pro

Easy to learn, More to Go

It is very easy to learn and it has community support and many categories available. See More

Top Pro

Import Turtle

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

Best chances of earning most money

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

Top Pro

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

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

Top Pro

Includes pygame library

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

Top Pro

Static typing via mypy

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

Top Pro

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

See All

score 7 · Answer 6

JavaScript

Top Con

Moving forward, Javascript will be replaced in less than a decade

The plan to git rid of JavaScript as the main Web technology is already in place. Web pages will be AI written by AIs in languages such as Kotlin or C# on top of web Assembly. No point in learning a technology that, albeit the fact being on top of job markets for programmers, will be replaced in some 5 years time. See More

Top Pro

Required for web development

If you are looking to create web projects, you will have to learn Javascript in order to develop the client side code. If you learn the foundations of programming in JavaScript you can reapply that education later in building web applications. See More

Specs

Engine:V8/ChakraCore

Author:Ryan Dahl/Joyent

Minimum Supported ECMAScript Version:ECMAScript 6 (Node v4.x-v10.x)

ECMAScript Modules:Available (as a flag) (only on Node 8.x-10.x)

See All Specs

Top Con

The "this" keyword doesn't mean what you think it means

this is bound to whatever object called the function. Unless you invoke it as a method. Unless you invoke it as a constructor. Unless it's an arrow function. See More

Top Pro

No installation required

If you run a web browser you already have JavaScript installed and can get started right away. Modern browsers such as Chrome also have very powerful programming consoles built into them. Aside from the browser console, you can also use online Javascript playgrounds such as JS Bin and JS Fiddle. Even from a tablet. See More

Top Con

Easy to accidentally use globals

If you forget a var or new, you can clobber the global scope. For tiny scripts (JavaScript's original use case) globals are great, but for larger applications globals are generally regarded as a Bad Thing. This is because changes to one small part of a program can randomly break things anywhere else. These kinds of bugs are notoriously hard to find. See More

Top Pro

Runs on both the browser and the server

With Node.js, it is now possible to run JavaScript as a web server. This would allow you to be able to create server based applications sooner than would if you had to learn a separate programming language as well for server side code. As JavaScript is the only language supported by web browsers it puts it in the unique situation of being the only programming language that's available on both the client side and server side. See More

Top Con

Many errors pass silently

JavaScript looks for every possible way to treat the code you write as runnable and is very reluctant to point out likely errors. For example, you have call a function with too many arguments, the extra arguments are simply discarded. See More

Top Pro

First-class functions with lexical closures

While certainly not the only language with these features, this pro alone is so powerful that it compensates for most of JavaScript's problems. You'll learn to use closures and higher-order functions well in JavaScript, because you have to. And then you can generalize this knowledge to any other language that has these, and the good ones do. See More

Top Pro

Easy to build an application

By using the UI capabilities in HTML and CSS you can develop substantial applications with graphical interfaces more quickly and with less effort than in other languages which would require you to learn a windowing library. Building a useful application is one of the best ways to learn a new language and because of the low learning curve for creating applications you can create more substatial programs and learn more practical programming priciple faster. See More

Top Pro

Massive ecosystem

JavaScript has one of the largest programming ecosystems, as shown by the being the most popular language for projects on GitHub. As there are so many projects written in JavaScript there are lots of libraries available to build off of and many of them are written to be easy to use and integrate into other projects. There are also lots of resources available for learning JavaScript. Other than traditional tutorials, language learning sites such as Codecademy have JavaScript courses. The Mozilla Developer Database also serves as a great resource for learning about the standard libraries built into JavaScript. See More

Top Pro

C-like syntax

After learning Javascript, you will feel at home in other languages as C-like syntax is very common. See More

Top Pro

JSON is native to JS

JSON is arguably a "must-learn". With JS, that's one less additional syntax to learn. See More

Top Pro

Very good debugger

Has a built in debugger with break points, watches that work on local values, and a console that you can use to edit anything at any time. Both in the browser (eg: Chrome), and server (eg: Nodejs). See More

Top Pro

High demand for JavaScript developers

If you're looking for a career as a developer, JavaScript is the place to focus your attention. There is a huge demand for good developers especially in frameworks such as React and Angular. See More

Top Pro

Complete dev stack can be run online

With codepen.io and other prototyping tools, you can learn Javascript from a mobile device. You don't even need a computer. It can be learned from an internet cafe or public library. See More

Top Pro

Can be very simple (teachable)

By setting a few ground-rules (effectively coding in a subset of JS), JS is one of the simplest languages to learn (requiring very few must-learn prerequisite concepts). See More

Top Pro

Instant gratification

While it's easy to argue that Python will give you instant gratification, JavaScript is far better in this regard. Make a small change to a page and it's immediately visible in the browser. You can throw in a JavaScript library like jQuery with minimal fuss. See More

Top Pro

Great tools for development

Flow, JSHint/ESLint, Babel, npm, etc. See More

Top Pro

Several Platforms to use the web stack and JS to create multi-platform apps

Opens the door to native application development as well as just websites. Use with React Native, Weex or Quasar (Vue), PhoneGap or Cordova, NativeScript... (etc) to build native apps. Use mostly the same code base for multi-platform and web. See More

Top Pro

Atwood's Law "Any application that can be written in JavaScript, will eventually be written in JavaScript."

May also be a con. See More

Top Pro

Integrates very well with UE4

Coding an immersive 3D game can retain the attention of new programmers. ncsoft/Unreal.js. See More

Top Pro

Speed (most implementations)

JS/ES is in the running for the fastest interpreted language given the optimizations and JIT integration of popular implementations. On the other hand, it fails utterly when compared with compiled (to native or VM code) languages. See More

Top Pro

Prototype based Object Oriented System

Being object oriented, it supports the predominate and powerful programming approach. Being prototype based, it provides an intuitive approach to OOP. Whereas other popular languages use classes, which focus on thinking in the abstract, Javascript's prototypes allow you to focus on thinking in the concrete. For example, in a prototypical language, you think of a rectangle, and define it. You now have a rectangle. Let's say you want a red rectangle, you copy the rectangle and give it the property red. Want a blue one? Copy rectangle again give it a blue. Big blue rectangle? Copy blue rectangle and make it big. In a class-based language, first you describe a rectangle, describe a red rectangle as a type of rectangle, describe blue and big blue rectangles, and now that you have described them, you must create instances of them, and only then do you have the rectangles. Essentially: Classes are factories for objects, prototypes are objects themselves, and the latter method was created to be more intuitive, which is particularly advantageous to beginners. See More

Top Pro

Modern ESNext is far better than the JS of days past

Modern JS has made great strides, and can be targerted to older (or non-standard) browsers using Babel. There are new language constructs that can make programming in JS comfortable.; e.g.: async / await ( <3 ). See More

See All

score 3 · Answer 7

TypeScript

Top Pro

Has a repository of high quality TypeScript type definitions for popular libraries

There are many ready to use and high quality TypeScript definitions for popular libraries including jquery, angular, bootstrap, d3, lodash and many-many more. See More

Top Con

Trick of Microsoft

Attempt to derail language they don't control. Think of C#/Microsoft versus Java (Sun) or Pascal/Delphi (Borland). See More

CalmKuraokami's Experience

A bit better than JavaScript, providing at least some static typing. A huge missed opportunity though. That "typing" it has in name stops working in involved cases, where you need it most and many times even works against you. Given the basic idea, it may have been a great language, unfortunately, it is not. See More

Specs

Current stable version:3.7

IDE Support:Very good

Top Pro

Ability to do functional programming

Top Con

Syntax is too verbose

Top Pro

Built and supported by Microsoft

Being built by Microsoft, TypeScript is much more likely than most other similar open-source projects to receive continued long-term support, good documentation, and a steady stream of development. See More

Top Con

Too similar to Javascript

Presents some advantages compared to Javascript, but because it is designed to be a superset of Javascript, it means all the bad parts of Javascript are still present. See More

Top Pro

Great support for editors (Sublime, Code, Vim, IntelliJ...)

Top Pro

Great support for React, integrated typed JSX parsing

Strongly typed react components, so UI "templating" automatically gains type safety. See More

Top Pro

Clear roadmap

TypeScript has a clear and defined roadmap with rapid and constant releases. See More

Top Pro

Works well with existing Javascript code

Both can call Javascript code and be called by Javascript code. Making transitioning to the language very easy. See More

Top Pro

Adds support for object-oriented programming

Typescript enables familiar object-oriented programming patterns: classes, inheritance, public/private methods and properties, et cetera. See More

Top Pro

Compiles to very native looking code

Compiles to simple looking Javascript making it easy to understand what is happening and learn the language (if you already know Javascript). See More

Top Pro

Low number of logical errors brought in by built-in type annotations

TypeScript's built-in type signatures allow developers to fully document interfaces and make sure that they will be correctly compiled. Therefore, cutting down on logical errors. See More

Top Pro

Polyfill for ES6 fat-arrow syntax

Typescript implements the fat arrow syntax, which always maintains the current context for this and is a shorter/more convenient syntax than traditional function definition. See More

Top Pro

Strict superset of Javascript

Every existing Javascript program is already a valid TypeScript program giving it the best support for existing libraries, which is particularly useful if you need to integrate with an existing Javascript code base. See More

Top Pro

First party Visual Studio support

As a Microsoft developed project, it has first party Visual Studio support that's on par with its C# support with features like syntax sensitive statement completion. See More

Top Pro

Strong typed language

Lot of benefits of it, you can read this. See More

Top Pro

Optional static typing

Typescript has optional static typing with support for interfaces and generics, and intelligent type inference. It makes refactoring large codebases a breeze, and provides many more safeguards for creating stable code. See More

Top Pro

Works well with Angular 2

Angular 2 is built using TypeScript and applications built using it can make use of that (or not). See More

See All

score 7 · Answer 8

Rust

Top Pro

Low-level programming language

Top Con

You will be fighting with the compiler

Life is too short to be losing one's mind over trying to get good programs to compile. See More

CalmKuraokami's Experience

C++ is great, but it has carries huge historical baggage, resulting many things that I thoroughly hate. Rust very elegantly solves many many of them, while preserving all the goodness. See More

Specs

Current stable version:1.71.1

Platforms:Linux, MacOS X, Windows, BSD

License:MIT/Apache

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

Low productivity

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

Long compile times

Way longer to compile than other languages. See More

Top Pro

Built-in concurrency

Rust has built-in support for concurrency. See More

Top Con

Hard to read

Difficult language to read and understand. See More

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Steep learning curve

Pretty strict and hard to adapt for beginners. 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

Significant time required to understand the language fully

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

Top Pro

Big community

The biggest community contributing to language. See More

Top Pro

Easy to write understandable code

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

Top Pro

Functional programming

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

Top Pro

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

See All

score 2 · Answer 9

Nim

Top Con

Weird thread model

Not turned on by default. Has very odd and convoluted rules on memory sharing between threads. Harder to use. 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

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, but came out 2008. You not getting a job with this. Nobody need this language, not even for hobby, as others much better. See More

Specs

Current stable version:2.0.0

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

License:MIT

GZipped size:14,2 MB

See All Specs

Top Con

Generics are a mess

Confused mishmash of conflicting ideas. 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 Con

Community harsh if criticised

If one even dares to start a discussion about a feature on discord, subreddit or github one will be aggressively shut down . 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

Concurrency hard to use

Difficult to use, too verbose. 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

Lacks void / null safety

Easy to get involved in safety issues. See More

Top Pro

Has built-in async support

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

Top Con

Whitespace sensitive syntax

Burns eyes and is ugly. 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 for cash. 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 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 unittest module

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

Top Pro

Multi paradigm

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

Top Pro

Compile-time execution

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

Top Pro

Strict typing

Checks your code at compile time. See More

Top Pro

Really cross-platform

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

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

See All

score 3 · Answer 10

Julia

Top Pro

Strong dynamic typing

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

CrediblePerseus's Experience

The killer app is Jupyter Notebook, which combines documentation as Markdown, the REPL in code cells, and the ability to save as HTML, PDF, for publication. Data visualization is second to none through several packages. See More

Specs

Current stable version:1.5.3

Platforms:Windows, Linux, Mac, FreeBSD

Type Model:Dynamically Typed

Top Pro

Function and operator broadcasting

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

Top Pro

High-level code

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

Top Pro

Almost as fast as C

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

Top Pro

Great standard REPL

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

Top Pro

REPL-based

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

Top Pro

Written in itself

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

Top Pro

Strong Metaprogramming

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

Top Pro

Powerful n-dimensional arrays

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

Top Pro

Amazing learning curve

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

Top Pro

Nice regular syntax

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

Top Pro

Function overloading

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

See All

score 2 · Answer 11

Lobster

Top Pro

Inline structs

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

CalmLeiGong's Experience

Like it more than Nim or Rust. See More

Specs

Current stable version:v2023

Platforms:Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, iOS

License:Apache v2

Developer:Wouter van Oortmerssen

See All Specs

Top Pro

WebAssembly backend

More options for users. 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

Top Pro

Automatic memory management

Better than Rust. No sadism. See More

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 Pro

Python-esque syntax

There's an audience who loves that. See More

Top Pro

Type inference algorithm

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

See All

score 1 · Answer 12

Kotlin

Top Con

The need for Java interoperability has forced some limitations

The need to make Kotlin interoperable with Java has caused some unintuitive limitations to the language design. See More

Top Pro

Oracle and Google support

For Android development both Oracle and Google seem to be favoring Kotlin on top of Java. See More

Specs

Current stable version:1.3

Top Con

Very Android centric

Top Pro

Officially supported for Android development

Starting with version 3.0 of Android Studio, Kotlin support will be built-in. This means that it's now easier than ever to use Kotlin for existing Android projects or even start writing Android apps only with Kotlin from scratch. This also means that Kotlin and Kotlin plugins for Android Studio will be fully supported in the future and their likelihood of being abandoned is quite small since Google is fully embracing the language for their Android ecosystem (alongside Java and C++). See More

Top Con

May be hard for programmers already used to imperative style to learn functional programming from Kotlin

Since Kotlin does not enforce any particular paradigms and is not purely functional, it can be pretty easy to fall back to imperative programming habits if a programmer comes from an imperative background. See More

See All

score 2 · Answer 13

F#

Top Con

Relies On .NET

.NET creates issues in terms of size, security, and being at the mercy of Microsoft. See More

Top Pro

.NET Interoperability

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

Specs

Current stable version:6.0

License:Apache 2.0

IDE Support:Visual Studio, Code, Rider

Top Con

Relies on OOP libraries

F# tries to position itself as a functional programming language, but because of .NET, relies on OOP libraries. See More

Top Pro

Concise syntax

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

See All

score 3 · Answer 14

Haskell

Top Con

Documentation for most packages is short and lacking

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

Top Pro

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

Specs

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

Paradigm:functional

Type System:static

Top Con

Obscure ugly notation

0 = 1 Using "=" like this: <code> -- Using recursion (with pattern matching) factorial 0 = 1 factorial n = n * factorial (n - 1) </code> Example from here is quite simply annoying aesthetics. See More

Top Con

Symbols everywhere

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

Top 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 Con

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

See All

score 2 · Answer 15

Elm

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

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

Specs

Current stable version:0.19.1

Platforms:Windows Linux Mac Web

GZipped size:23.2 kB

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

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

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

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

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 argueing that one should use purescript instead 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

Code repetition

Because of the lack of genericity, Elm needs a lot of code to be repeated. There are 130+ implementations of map in Elm's core libraries. 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

Growing community

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 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 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 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

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

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 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

See All

score 1 · Answer 16

Swift

Top Con

Too macOS Centric

Not truly cross-platform. See More

Top Pro

The IOs language

being backed by Apple, it is the technology for developing applications for IOs , and as years pass by, also to MAC OS See More

Specs

Platforms:Mac, Linux

Top Pro

Backed by Apple

Top Pro

Swift is closer to other platforms

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

Top Pro

Can be used as a Just-In-Time language

Top Pro

Works with Apple's Cocoa and Cocoa Touch frameworks

See All

score 2 · Answer 17

PHP

Top Con

Poorly designed language

Despite its widespread use, PHP is generally looked upon poorly from a design point of view. The consistency of function names and function argument order, lazily and borderline non-functional implementation of object oriented programming, can only receive requests via POST methods, slow version adoption (the PHP you learn right now may not work on every webserver you'll work on), and a focus on "hacking things together" rather than "doing it right". These are all very common complaints when it comes to working with PHP. While not a bad language to learn, PHP is not at all a good language to learn first, as it will probably teach bad habits. See More

Top Pro

Fast

Since 7.x was released, PHP has become a pretty fast language. See More

CalmKuraokami's Experience

One of the most poorly designed language out there. PHP had its time, but should not have made it this far. The sooner it dies, the more agony it will save to itself and people using it. See More

Specs

Current stable version:8.0

Price:Open Source (free)

Top Con

Most tutorials are out of date

A lot of very bad tutorials are still widely circulated among beginners, and these tutorials teach very poor programming practices. See More

Top Pro

Lots of PHP frameworks available which help with development

PHP people love frameworks, and with frameworks such as Laravel, you can build a web app or API really fast (Facades, ORMs, scaffolding etc.) See More

Top Con

market share for this technology is expected to fall

Top Pro

Great documentation

Top Con

Immense catalog of insecure frameworks

The most serious security problems in websites on the web today are almost universally found in popular PHP frameworks, CMS platforms, libraries and code samples, almost all stemming from poor language design, bad tutorials and awful resources. See More

Top Pro

Great third-party package manager

PHP standard library is somewhat subpar, but if you need plugins, language features, composer has them all( you can even puzzle together a custom framework from composer). See More

Top Con

Interpreter being too permissive

If you forget the dollar sign, the variable name will be converted to a string. See More

Top Pro

Most prominent language for web applications

Part of the de facto standard web application stack. See More

Top Con

Most resources are poorly-written

Few resources exemplify the "correct" or secure use of features. See More

Top Pro

Used by most common CMS platforms

Many clients are looking for an easy-to-update web site that's flexible and free. Drupal and Wordpress fill those needs very well. See More

Top Pro

Lots of tutorials online

Top Pro

One of the most common languages

According to the 2015 Stack Overflow Developer Survey (26,086 people surveyed), PHP was the 5th most popular/used language at 29.7%. See More

See All

What is the best programming language to learn?

17 Options Considered

Pascal / Object Pascal

My Recommendation for Pascal / Object Pascal

My Recommendation for Pascal / Object Pascal

Easy GUI creation

Still active

Easy

Cross platform

Understanding of basics

Fast compilation

Tons of academic reading

Enforces good programming practice

Clear syntax

Incredible GUI design tools

Dynamic evolution of language

Language depth

Reliable language and code base

C

My Recommendation for C

My Recommendation for C

Understanding of computers

Other languages can do it easier or better

Industry standard

Languages is full of corner cases and undefined behaviors

Helps with learning other languages later

Requires memory management

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

Completely lacks type safety

Ubiquitous

Portable between CPU architectures

Foundational, difficult but important

Must-have

Basic concepts can be applied to accelerate learning any other language

C is simple with lesser rules than any other language

Easy to drop down to assembly

Teaches good practices

More control over the code

Low level of abstraction

Portable

The king of languages, imitated, extended but never equalled

Go

My Recommendation for Go

My Recommendation for Go

Golang controlled by Google

Supports 'modules' in the form of packages

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

Does OO without class-based OOP

Does not have sum types

Multiple variables may be assigned on a single line

Lacks support for immutable data

Easy to install and configure; simple to compile software

Doesn't have true enums

Exceptionally simple and scalable multithreaded and concurrent programming

No forms designer

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

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

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

Easy to shadow variable

Supports functional programming techniques such as function literals

Performance slowdown because of indirect calls and garbage collection

Built-in tooling

Implementation of interfaces are difficult to figure out

Google's C++ has the potential to become the defacto DataBase Driver

V

My Recommendation for V

My Recommendation for V

High readability

Highly questionable "Fake it till you make it" marketing

Can create multi-OS GUIs

The author of the language is an expert con artist

Cross-platform

Fast like C

Clear syntax

Safety

C Interop

Does OO without class-based OOP

Closures

Supports concurrency and channels

Inline assembly