The Slant team built an AI & it’s awesome

Find the best product instantly

4.7 star rating

What are the best minimalist programming languages?

9

Options
Considered

11

User
Recs.

Jan 29, 2024

Last
Updated

9 Options Considered

Best minimalist programming languages	Price	Current stable version	Platforms
-- Nim	-	2.0.0	Windows, MacOS/iOS, Linux /Android/Termux, *BSD, Solaris/SmartOS, HaikuOS, lots of others
-- Rust	-	1.71.1	Linux, MacOS X, Windows, BSD
-- C	FREE	C'18	-
-- Common Lisp	-	-	-
-- Haskell	-	-	-

Nim

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

Specs

Current stable version:2.0.0

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

IDE Support:https://github.com/nim-lang/Nim/wiki/editor-support

Top Pro

Built-in Unicode support

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

Top Pro

Great metaprogramming features

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

Top Pro

Easy to read

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

Top Pro

Really cross-platform

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

Top Pro

Garbage-collected

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

Top Pro

Has built-in unittest module

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

Top Pro

Supports UFCS (Unified Function Call Syntax)

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

Top Pro

Has built-in async support

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

Top Pro

Strict typing

Checks your code at compile time. See More

Top Pro

Type interferencing

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

Top Pro

Easy to integrate with another languages

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

Top Pro

Multi paradigm

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

Rust

Top Pro

Big community

The biggest community contributing to language. See More

Specs

Current stable version:1.71.1

Platforms:Linux, MacOS X, Windows, BSD

License:MIT/Apache

Top Pro

Supports cross compilation for different architectures

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

Top Pro

Makes developers write optimal code

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

Top Pro

Generics support

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

Top Pro

Built-in concurrency

Rust has built-in support for concurrency. See More

Top Pro

Compiles to machine code allowing for extra efficiency

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

Top Pro

Functional programming

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

Official package manager and build tool

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

Top Pro

Support for macros

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

Top Pro

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

C

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

Specs

Current stable version:C'18

Paradigm:imperative

Typing discipline:static

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

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

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

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

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 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

Low level langauge

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

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

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

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

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 Pro

Helps with learning other languages later

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

Top Pro

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 Pro

Ubiquitous

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

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

Common Lisp

Top Pro

Very Powerful REPL with SLIME

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

Top Pro

Carefully designed for interactive use

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

Top Pro

Almost as fast as, or faster than, C

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

Top Pro

Image based runtime

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

Top Pro

Condition/restart system

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

Haskell

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

Specs

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

Paradigm:functional

Type System:static

Top Pro

Powerful categorical abstractions

Makes categorical higher order abstractions easy to use and natural to 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

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

Easy syntax for people with a STEM degree

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

Top Pro

Mathematical consistency

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

Top Pro

Functions curry automatically

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

Top 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

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

Open source

All Haskell implementations are completely free and open source. 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

Forces you to learn pure functional programming

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

Top 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

V

Top Pro

C Interop

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

Top Pro

Sum types

V has sum types. See More

Top Pro

Fast compile times

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

Top Pro

Supports concurrency and channels

Can run functions concurrently that communicate over channels. 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

Safety

V is very safe. See More

Top Pro

Closures

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

Top Pro

Clear syntax

Highly understandable language. See More

Top Pro

Cross-platform

Compile app to run on different OSes. See More

Top Pro

Generics

V has generics. See More

Top Pro

Fast like C

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

Top Pro

GUI support

V comes with (simple) GUI support out of the box. See More

Racket

Top Pro

Free resources to Learn

Includes several free online books and great documentation. See More

Specs

Current stable version:8.5

Platforms:Linux, Windows, OSX

Site:https://racket-lang.org

Paradigm:Multi-paradigm: functional, imperative, logic, meta, modular, object-oriented, reflective

Top Pro

Active community

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

Top Pro

Realm of Racket is an excellent entry-level guidebook

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

Top Pro

Great RPEL IDEA included Dr. Racket

Top Pro

Subtly encourages functional programming

Racket makes it inconvenient to pursue imperative habits while encouraging functional programming by Lisps's syntax. For example, the syntax for defining a function is almost the exact same as defining a variable. In addition, Racket has a strong set of higher-order functions built in to the language. See More

Top Pro

Syntax fits to functional programming

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

Top Pro

Racket was designed to teach functional programming from the start

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

Top Pro

Easily embeddable

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

Zig

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

No closures

Does not have closures. See More

EncouragingInara's Experience

Highly unstable langauge, despite around 7 years of development. Full of abrupt changes and lots of confusion. Can not maintain significant projects that use this language, without constant rewrites. Compile error full of useless information or fails to report. Confusing reference vs value. No built in regular expressions. Poor documentation. No standard package manager. See More

Specs

Current stable version:0.11.0

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

Site:https://ziglang.org/

Top Pro

Compile-time execution w/ no separate preproc

Zig can execute code at compile-time (comptime), allowing for more performant and readable programs. The parts that are comptime do not compete with the runtime parts as they are the exact same language with no separation. See More

Top Con

No lambdas

Missing many key and useful features other languages have. 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

Top Pro

Small binary

Produces binary smaller than C. 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

Some safety

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

Top Con

Convoluted syntax

Claims to be an improvement over C, but in this area, not really. See More

Top Pro

C compiler internally

Zig programs can import C libraries and export header files directly. All of the C types are included. 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

Performance

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

Top Con

No standard package manager

Several years into development, and still no standard package manager is ridiculous. See More

Top Pro

Control flow is simple and obvious

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

Top Con

Creator admits to 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

Poor compiler errors

Several years into development, language still a mess, and no hope of fixing itself for yet more years later. 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 that (0.9.1) that language was close to ready, when it's not. 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 Con

Small community

Groups, rooms, and channels are all unofficial. If you don't like one, join another. No official community platform is endorsed, and no single social group is condoned. The community is alive and well, yet small. Groups include a variety of platforms from IRC servers, Discord servers, Matrix rooms, and Telegram groups. 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

Lacking in libraries and users. See More

Go

Top Pro

Golang is a Systems Programming Language !!

https://www.quora.com/Is-Go-a-systems-programming-language See More

Built By the Slant team

Find the best product instantly.

4.7 star rating

Try it now - it's free

Vetted.ai illustration