What are the languages that have most powerful and easy to use free IDEs?

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DevelopmentGame DevelopmentMobile DevelopmentIDE

What are the languages that have most powerful and easy to use free IDEs?

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Aug 13, 2023

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14 Options Considered

What are the languages that have most powerful and easy to use free IDEs	Price	Platforms	License
61 C#	-	Windows, Linux, Mac, Android, IOS	MIT, Open Source
56 Kotlin	-	-	-
-- TypeScript	-	-	-
50 Java	-	-	-
-- Pharo	-	MacOSX; Linux; Windows	MIT

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score 56 · Answer 1

C#

Top Pro

Visual Studio Community

Top Con

Complex syntax

Too many syntactic constructs to learn before it becomes usable. See More

WiseJuthrbog's Experience

Working with C# for 10 years. Now use Visual studio community with plugins and happy with it See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, Linux, Mac, Android, IOS

License:MIT, Open Source

IDE Support:Visual Studio on Windows, JetBrains Rider, Visual Studio Code on other platforms

Standard:ECMA

Top Pro

Visual Studio Code

Top Con

Often-used products in most C# development environments get expensive

The majority of the C# development community uses Microsoft products which are not all free and open-source. As you get into the enterprise level of some of these products and subscriptions, the expense is multiple factors of 10 greater. While you can use a fully open-source and free C# environment, the community around that is much smaller. While this can be said for other languages as well, the majority of C# falls into the for-pay Microsoft realm. See More

AffableDimangan's Experience

~5 years in university and some at work See More

Top Pro

Project Rider - IntelliJ

Project Rider is currently in beta from JetBrains, built on top of the IntelliJ platform and ReSharper. Currently it's free and when it's released could have a free offering to keep an eye on. See More

Top Con

Too easy to write multithreading apps that are buggy

Many web frameworks or GUI libraries will push novice users to writing multithreaded code, which leads to frustrating race condition bugs. Other languages with multithreading push users towards safe constructs, like passing messages and immutable or synchronized containers. But in C# the data structures aren't synchronized by default, and it's too easy to just set a field and observe the result from another thread (until you compile with Release, and now you have a heisenbug). See More

Top Pro

.NET truly universal

C# runs on top of the .NET framework, which provides many libraries containing classes used for common tasks such as connecting to the Internet, displaying a window or editing files. Unlike many other languages, you don't have to pick between a handful of libraries for every small task you want to do. With .NET core it is a truly universal programming language which supports desktop apps (Windows), Mobile apps (Xamarin), Web Apps (ASP.Core MVC). Also is perfectly fit to serverless programming for micro services. Soon it will also support Web assembly (Blazor). See More

Top Con

Static typing limits value of any IDE for live debugging and refactoring

Top Pro

Awesome IDE for Windows

On Windows, Visual Studio is the recommended C# IDE. It provides a very flexible GUI that you can rearrange the way you want and many useful features such as refactorings (rename a variable, extract some code into a method, ...) and code formatting (you can pick exactly how you want the code to be formatted). Visual Studio also highlights your errors when you compile, making your debug sessions more efficient since you don't have to run the code to see the mistakes. There's also a powerful debugger that allows you to execute the code step-by-step and even change what part of the code will be executed next. In addition to giving you all the line-by-line information you'll need in a hassle-free manner, Visual Studio has stuff you can click on in the errors window that will take you to the documentation for that error, saving you several minutes of web searching. In addition to all of this, Visual Studio has an intuitive, intelligent, and helpful graphical user interface designer that generates code for you (the best of WYSIWYG, in my opinion), which is helpful for new programmers. Being able to create a fantastic-looking UI with one's mouse and then optionally tweak with code helps make programming fun for beginner developers. Visual Studio also has the best code completion --Intellisense is every bit as intelligent as the name says it is. It, as well as VS's parameter hinting, is context-, type-, user-, and position-sensitive, and displays relevant completions in a perfectly convenient yet understandable order. This feature allows a new programmer to answer the questions "What does this do?" and "How do I use it?" right then and there rather than having to switch to a browser to read through extensive documentation. This allows the programmer to satisfy their curiosity before it is snuffed out by several minutes of struggling through exhaustive documentation. And for the more adventurous and text-ready developer, Microsoft does the best job of ensuring that everything, from interfaces and wildcard types down to Console.WriteLine("") and the + operator, is well-documented and easy to understand, with relevant and well-explained usage examples that manage to be bite-size yet complete, simple yet truly helpful. The reference site is easy to navigate, well-organized, clean and uncluttered, up-to-date, and fresh and enjoyable to look at, and every page is well-written with consideration for readers who are not C# experts yet want to read about changing the console background color. The best part? It's free! Visual C# Express contains all of the features described above, at zero cost. If you are a student, you can probably get Visual Studio Professional from your university, which also includes tools for unit testing and supports plugins. See More

Top Pro

Visual Studio for Mac

Top Pro

Supports some functional features

C# is primarily object-oriented, but it also supports some features typically found in functional languages such as lambdas, delegates and anonymous classes. Methods can be treated like any other object, and the Linq query system operates on monads with lazy evaluation (though it hides this with a lot of syntactic sugar). You don't need to use these features to code in C#, though, so you can start with OOP and then learn about them. See More

Top Pro

Great language for Unity game engine

Unity provides a selection of programming languages depending on preference or knowledge - C#, JS, Boo and UnityScript. C# is arguably the most powerful with better syntax and stronger language structure. It allows using script files without attaching them to any game object (classes, methods inside unattached scripts that can be used at any time). There are more tutorials and information for C# than UnityScript and Visual Studio can be used to code for unity in C#. Additionally, learning C# allows using it outside of Unity as well unlike UnityScript. See More

Top Pro

Best language for Windows programs

C# is clearly the best choice for Windows programs. The .NET framework contains everything you need to build great-looking apps, without having to learn the confusing Win32 API or download a ton of external libraries. C# can also be used to build Windows 8's "modern" apps. See More

Top Pro

Great introduction to object-oriented programming

Object-oriented programming is the most widely-used paradigm. C# offers support for common OOP features such as classes, methods and fields, plus some features not found in competing languages like properties, events and static classes. C# code is much more readable thanks to the syntactic sugar it offers. You can truly concentrate on your code, not on the way it's implemented. See More

Top Pro

Supported on many platforms

C# can be used for Windows apps, Linux apps, OS X apps, Windows 8 "modern" apps, websites, games, iPhone apps, Android apps, Windows Phone apps, and more. If you want to create a cross-platform application, you can share most of the code and write one GUI for each platform. See More

Top Pro

Very high demand in the industry

Top Pro

Incredibly well-engineered language

Where other languages invoke the feeling of being a product of organic growth over time, C# just feels like an incredibly well-designed language where everything has its purpose and almost nothing is non-essential. See More

Top Pro

Can mix high and low level programming

You can code at the high level without worrying about pointers and memory management, but if you so choose you can switch to lower level programming with direct memory management and pointer manipulation (though you need to compile to specifically allow this). See More

Top Pro

With ASP CORE a good language to learn

With CORE you are no longer just limited to Windows, so a language worth learning. See More

Top Pro

Incredibly well-engineered language

Where other languages invoke the feeling of being a product of organic growth over time, C# just feels like an incredibly well-designed language where everything has its purpose and almost nothing is non-essential. See More

Top Pro

Awesome IDE for cross-platform development

Visual studio has embraced cross platform development over the past 3 years. With Visual Studio Code, you now have a light, and quick IDE variant available for free as well. See More

Top Pro

Very high demand in the industry

C#'s been around for just the right amount of time, is regularly updated with useful additions, is versatile, easy to write & read, & has excellent tooling support. This means it is a top choice for many organizations & will remain so for the foreseeable future. See More

Top Pro

Static type system

It makes easier to use it in large scale and long lifetime projects. See More

Top Pro

Eclipse CDT

See All

score 37 · Answer 2

Kotlin

Top Pro

Great tooling support

Since Kotlin is made by Jetbrains (the developers of IntelliJ IDEA) so it stands to reason that the IntelliJ support for Kotlin is also great. Besides that, Kotlin also works well with existing Java tools such as Eclipse, Maven, Gradle, Android Studio, etc... See More

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

Specs

Current stable version:1.3

Top Pro

Easy adoption for existing Java programmers

Kotlin runs on the JVM and Java interoperability has been one of the main objectives since the language was born. It runs everywhere Java does; web servers, mobile devices (Android), and desktop applications. It also works with all the major tools in the Java ecosystem like Eclipse, IntelliJ, Maven, Ant, Gradle, Spring Boot, etc. All of this makes adoption extremely easy even for existing Java projects. On top of this there's also ensured Type safety and less boilerplate code needed. See More

Top Con

IDEs are not easy to use

Java VM languages do not have great IDEs. See More

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

Top Pro

Low-risk adoption for existing Java codebases

Since it has such a good interoperability with Java, Java libraries, and Java tools. It can be adopted for an existing Java codebase at little to no cost. The codebase can be converted from Java to Kotlin little by little without ever disrupting the functionality of the application itself. See More

Top Pro

Does not impose a particular philosophy of programming

It's not overly OOP like Java and it does not enforce strict functional paradigms either. See More

Top Pro

Is built to solve industrial problems

Kotlin has been designed and built by developers who have an industrial background and not an academic one. As such, it tries to solve issues mostly found in industrial settings. For example, the Kotlin type system helps developers avoid null pointer exceptions. Reasearch languages usually do not have null at all, but APIs and large codebases usually need null. See More

Top Pro

IntelliJ IDEA Community

The website mentions that it can also be used for commercial development. See More

Top Pro

Easy to learn if you have prior programming experience

Kotlin's syntax is extremely easy to understand. The language can be picked up in a few hours just by reading the language reference. See More

Top Pro

No runtime overhead

The standard library is relatively small and tight. It mostly consists of focused extensions of the Java standard library and as such adds no additional runtime overhead to existing Java projects. See More

See All

score 14 · Answer 3

TypeScript

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

Specs

Current stable version:3.7

IDE Support:Very good

Top Pro

Clear roadmap

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

Strong typed language

Lots of benefits of it, you can read this. 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

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

Top Pro

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

See All

score 39 · Answer 4

Java

Top Pro

Cross platform

Java runs everywhere. See More

Top Con

Confusing mis-features

Some features in Java can be quite confusing for beginners. Encapsulation is needlessly obfuscated with a confusing access control model. As an example, the "protected" keyword not only grants access to child classes, but to the entire package. Since small programs are written as one package, it becomes functionally equivalent to "public". In OOP, everything is supposed to be an object, but, in Java, primitive types such as integers, booleans and characters are not, and must be handled as special cases. Java continues to lack many high-level features, and, particularly prior to Java 7, compensated by adding confusing Java-only features, such as anonymous subclasses. Some example code is unreadable without knowing a special-case feature, libraries differ in style based on when they were released or what platform they target(e.g., Android vs. Desktop), and some solutions just aren't available on some platforms. See More

Specs

Current stable version:10

Price:Open source (free)

Site:https://www.java.com

Top Pro

Fantastic IDEs

Because Java is statically typed, integrated development environments (IDEs) for Java can provide a lot more feedback on errors you will encounter. Java IDEs can give you specific errors in the location where they occur without having to run the code every time. This makes is faster to debug and learn from your mistakes. IDEs also have extensive auto complete capabilities that can help you learn the programming libraries you are using faster and tell you what functions are available. See More

Top Con

Static typing but no type inference

The type system gets in your way more than it helps. Heavy IDE support is absolutely required for reasonable productivity. This means beginners have to learn not just the language, but eventually a complex, heavyweight IDE too. See More

Top Pro

Platform independent

Because of the Java Virtual Machine, the Java programming language is supported wherever a JVM is installed. See More

Top Con

Too verbose

A Hello world needs package, class, static method and the actual printf. Reading a line from input requires instatiating 5 objects in the right order. Exceptions are everywhere, particularly since all values are nullable. Java has a getter/setter culture, but without native syntax support. portable Java code lacks anonymous functions, and continues to lack good support for partial application, compensating instead with verbose design patterns, kludges like anonymous inner classes, or just inline code. It is statically typed without type inference, with a culture that promotes long class names. Poor support for sum-types and pattern matching leads to overuse of inheritance for dynamic dispatch and chains of nested conditionals Especially for beginners, this can make reading Java code feel overwhelming; most Java courses tell students to simply copy, paste, and ignore a significant percentage of the code until they've learned enough to understand what it means. For experienced programmers, this makes Java feel tedious, especially without an IDE, and actively discourages some solutions and some forms of abstraction. See More

Top Pro

One of the most commonly used languages in industry

Java is one of the most popular languages in industry, consistently ranking either first, or occasionally second (behind C or Javascript) in terms of usage. Polls (see sources below) show it to be consistently in high demand, particularly as measured by job board postings. This makes Java a great time investment, as you will be easily able to get a job utilizing your skills, particularly as those Java applications in production now will continue to need maintenance in the future. It also results in great support for tools and plenty of computer science books, example projects and online tutorials. See More

Top Con

Half-baked generics

Type erasure means it doesn't even exist at runtime. The whole generics system is confusing for beginners. See More

Top Pro

Massive amount of libraries and APIs

Java has been around for such a long time that there have been tens of thousands of APIs and libraries written for almost anything you want to do. See More

Top Con

Lacks modern features

Java evolves very slowly - lambda expressions weren't available until Java 8 (which is not available on Android), and despite getters/setters being a long-time convention, the language still doesn't have native accessor syntax (a la C#'s properties). It's unlikely newer, popular features like list comprehensions or disjoint union types will be available anytime soon. While not strictly required for novice programmers, these make problems more complicated and tedious than they need to be - for example, when a simple local function would do, (portable) Java demands anonymous inner classes, an interface and a class, or worse, no abstraction at all. See More

Top Pro

Consistent programming standards

Most Java code follows very standardized coding styles. This means that when you're starting out, there are fewer questions about how you should implement something as the programming styles and patterns are well established and consistent. This consistent style means that it's often easier to follow others' example code, and that it's more likely to meet at least a certain minimum standard of quality. This discipline with consistent stylistic standards also becomes useful later, when collaborating on projects with larger teams. See More

Top Con

Worst-of-both-worlds static type system

It's just barely good enough to make decent IDEs, but it's not at the level of Idris or even Haskell. For large enterprise projects, the IDE support is important, but the static typing in Java just gets in the way for the smaller projects beginners would start with. Python is duck typed and this makes small programs easy to develop quickly, but the price is that you have to write unit tests to avoid breaking larger programs. In contrast, you can be reasonably certain that a program that actually compiles in Idris does what you want, because assertions are built into the powerful type system. Java can't make that claim and still requires unit tests. Java has the worst of both worlds because of its poor static type system. See More

Top Pro

IntelliJ IDEA Community

Top Con

Enforces some misguided principles

Java utilizes principles that organize code into "classes" as the central concept, instead of more familiar organizational methods. See More

Top Pro

Eclipse

Top Con

Garbage collection may teach bad habits

Java is a garbage collected language and it does not force programmers to think about memory allocation and management for their programs. This is fine most of the time. However, it may cause some difficulties in adjusting to a non-GC language (such as C for example), where memory management needs to be done manually. But if good coding practices and habits are followed, this shouldn't be much of a problem. See More

Top Pro

Visual Studio Code with plugin

Top Con

Locks you into the static OOP mindset

Top Pro

Netbeans

Top Con

Static typing limits usability of any IDE

See All

score 11 · Answer 5

Pharo

Top Pro

Everything is integrated

You don't usually need to go outside the environment, all the tools you need are there. See More

Top Con

You need to think differently to C based languages

If you just want to work in a C based mindset and aren’t interested in thinking a bit differently then Smalltalk is probably not for you. See More

EnergeticNinsun's Experience

Using Smalltalk since 1990. See More

Specs

Platforms:MacOSX; Linux; Windows

License:MIT

Typing discipline:Dynamically typed

Paradigm:Object-oriented

See All Specs

Top Pro

Extremely flexible

You can find and edit the source code to suit your specific needs. You could redefine 'true' and 'false', or can write code which can modify itself later on. The code can do virtually anything you could ever want it to do. See More

Top Con

Git integration is not that good

This is not at all as automated and nice as one would expect. However the integrated Smalltalk VCS (Monticello) works very well. See More

Top Pro

Refactoring tools

The Refactoring Browser is where all refactorings begin. It provides great variety and flexibility to use comfortably and safely the most powerful refactorings. See More

Top Pro

Integrated debugger with live debugging

Update methods and continue execution. See More

Top Pro

Source files handled automatically

The code is stored as a OO dataset, which doesn't require any source files. This removes the need to save and recompile when adding new sources. See More

Top Pro

Highly productive

Top Pro

64 bit support as of Pharo 7

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

Top Pro

Object-Oriented

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

Top Pro

Easily learnt

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

Top Pro

Really simple networking and REST with Zinc

Top Pro

Beautiful coding patterns in your IDE

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

Top Pro

Glamorous toolkit & GTInspector

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

Top Pro

Can run headless for production

Top Pro

Seaside

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

Top Pro

Live updates

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

Top Pro

Graphics, graphing and visualisation framework - Roassal

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

Top Pro

Advanced code analysis tools

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

Top Pro

Code can be run on rock solid GemStone environment

Top Pro

Remote debugging

See All

score 6 · Answer 6

Scala

Top Pro

IntelliJ IDEA

Specs

Current stable version:2.13.1

Price:Open Source (Free)

Site:scala-lang.org

Top Pro

Scala IDE (Eclipse based)

Top Pro

Type inference leads to a simpler syntax

Top Pro

Compiles to JVM bytecode

Aside from Java itself, Scala is by far the most popular of the many JVM languages. If you're developing for Android, or a similar JVM-only platform, or otherwise need out-of-the-box cross-platform compatibility, but the performance of a compiled language, Scala is the way to go. See More

Top Pro

Netbeans + plugin

See All

score 11 · Answer 7

Python

Top Pro

Powerful

It has a lot of features. 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

DecisiveSopdet's Experience

I guess python is not fast, it is interpreted language, and is slower than its alternative and compiled langauges See More

Specs

Current stable version:3.9.1

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

Typing discipline:Dynamically typed

GZipped size:22.5MB

See All Specs

Top Pro

Easily configurable

Top Con

Significant whitespace

While proper formatting is essential for any programmer, beginners often have trouble understanding the need and lack the discipline to do it. Add to that all those editors that randomly convert N spaces (usually 8) to tabs and you get an instant disaster. See More

timlyo's Experience

Pycharm is a Python ide with all the features of Idea https://www.jetbrains.com/pycharm/ 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

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

Flexible

Top Con

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

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

Top Pro

Good documentation

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

Top Con

Hard to debug other people's code

As the structure of Python code is based on conventions many developers are not following them and so it is difficult to follow/extract the design of not trivial application from the code. See More

Top Pro

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

Speed can matter

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

Top Pro

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

Might not be very future-proof

Lots of features that will probably be crucial as time goes (good support for parallelism for example) are missing or are not that well-supported in Python. See More

Top Pro

Easy to get started

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

Top Con

The process of shipping/distributing software is reatively complicated

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

Top Pro

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

Unflexible userbase

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

Top Pro

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

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

Active development of most libraries and frameworks

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

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

Too opinionated for a general-purpose programming language

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

Top Pro

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

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

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

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

Does not teach you about data types

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

Top Pro

Very similar to pseudo-code

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

Top Con

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

Fast

Top Pro

Very convenient

See All

score 3 · Answer 8

Racket

Top Pro

Racket was designed to teach functional programming from the start

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

Specs

Current stable version:8.5

Platforms:Linux, Windows, OSX

Price:Free

Site:https://racket-lang.org

See All Specs

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

Top Pro

Syntax fits to functional programming

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

Top Pro

Active community

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

Top Pro

Great RPEL IDEA included Dr. Racket

Top Pro

Realm of Racket is an excellent entry-level guidebook

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

Top Pro

Free resources to Learn

Includes several free online books and great documentation. See More

See All

score 1 · Answer 9

Elm

Top Pro

Errors are caught at compile-time

Compiler itself can verify you will have no runtime exceptions (thus editors can too). See More

Top Con

Perhaps not as advanced more enterprisey languages

However, it's one of the few front end languages, that has these kinds of guarantees. See More

Specs

Current stable version:0.19.1

Platforms:Windows Linux Mac Web

GZipped size:23.2 kB

Top Pro

Shows docs for the symbol under the cursor

Top Pro

Auto imports libraries

Top Pro

Searches by type (elm jutsu)

Top Pro

Auto generates all cases of pattern matching (elm jutsu)

Top Pro

Pull things out int let/variables

See All

score 2 · Answer 10

ClojureScript

Top Pro

Your code runs live as you write it

The "Watches" feature lets you see your code running live as you type it. This means that you can debug your code live while writing it, which leads to considerably less programming errors. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, Linux, Mac

License:MIT

Integrated Debugger:REPL

Collaborative editing:No

See All Specs

Top Pro

Inline evaluation

With LT's inline evaluation, you don't have to re-compile your whole source file. Each time you want to see an output, all you have to do is hover your cursor over the line you'd like to evaluate and press ctrl+enter; LT will evaluate that line of code for you. See More

See All

score 3 · Answer 11

Ceylon

Top Pro

Excellent IDE support in Eclipse and IntelliJ IDEA

The language being very regular and strongly typed, the IDE support is first class. See More

Specs

Current stable version:1.3.2

score 6 · Answer 12

C++

Top Con

Module system is not great

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

Top Pro

Standard

C++ is an ISO standard not a major company product. See More

Specs

Standard: ISO/IEC 14882 or C++17

Engine:UE4 , Cocos-2d-x

Top Con

Bugs easily corrupt the memory you need to find them

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

Top Pro

Comes with the power QtCreator IDE

Part of Qt SDK, its IDE QtCreator is powerful and very user friendly. Combining C++ with QML makes it a very effective solution. See More

Top Con

Painfully slow compilation

Beginners need fast feedback See More

Top Pro

Modern

C++ can suffer from a bad reputation from the old days, but C++11/14/17 can be considered as a brand new language with a much better learning curve, much more effective. See More

Top Con

Memory leaks and segmentation faults

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

Top Pro

Powerful memory management

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

Top Con

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

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

Top Pro

Huge language supports most everything

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

Top Con

Huge language gets in the way of learning

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

Top Pro

Eclipse CDT

Top Pro

Visual Studio

See All

Answer 13

Laravel

Top Con

Hard to use model properties

You need to check all model properties in database to know it exists, or declare all them manually. See More

Specs

License:MIT License

Initial Release:June 2011

Written in:PHP

PHP version:7.2.0

See All Specs

Top Con

Steep learning curve

While a lot of times you can write things in plain PHP, it will hinder you down the line when you want to use core features and find that you have to rewrite code which then causes issues throughout the app. Documentation is good, but you need to know what you are looking for and practical examples are non-existent. Many features have been updated throughout the versions in such a short time that tutorials you find online are confusing to sort through outdated tutorials and guides that no longer work or have been depreciated. See More

Top Con

Follows bad design practices

Uses bad practices, like Singletons, Magic models, Middleware. See More

See All

Answer 14

Objective C

Top Pro

XCode

14 Options Considered

My Recommendation for C#

My Recommendation for C#

Visual Studio Community

Complex syntax

Visual Studio Code

Often-used products in most C# development environments get expensive

Project Rider - IntelliJ

Too easy to write multithreading apps that are buggy

.NET truly universal

Static typing limits value of any IDE for live debugging and refactoring

Awesome IDE for Windows

Visual Studio for Mac

Supports some functional features

Great language for Unity game engine

Best language for Windows programs

Great introduction to object-oriented programming

Supported on many platforms

Very high demand in the industry

Incredibly well-engineered language

Can mix high and low level programming

With ASP CORE a good language to learn

Incredibly well-engineered language

Awesome IDE for cross-platform development

Very high demand in the industry

Static type system

Eclipse CDT

My Recommendation for Kotlin

My Recommendation for Kotlin

Great tooling support

The need for Java interoperability has forced some limitations

Easy adoption for existing Java programmers

IDEs are not easy to use

Officially supported for Android development

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

Low-risk adoption for existing Java codebases

Does not impose a particular philosophy of programming

Is built to solve industrial problems

IntelliJ IDEA Community

Easy to learn if you have prior programming experience

No runtime overhead

My Recommendation for TypeScript

My Recommendation for TypeScript

Built and supported by Microsoft

Too similar to Javascript

Clear roadmap

Adds support for object-oriented programming

Strong typed language

Strict superset of Javascript

Works well with Angular 2

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

My Recommendation for Java

My Recommendation for Java

Cross platform

Confusing mis-features

Fantastic IDEs

Static typing but no type inference

Platform independent

Too verbose

One of the most commonly used languages in industry

Half-baked generics

Massive amount of libraries and APIs

Lacks modern features

Consistent programming standards

Worst-of-both-worlds static type system

IntelliJ IDEA Community

Enforces some misguided principles

Eclipse

Garbage collection may teach bad habits

Visual Studio Code with plugin

Locks you into the static OOP mindset

Netbeans

Static typing limits usability of any IDE

My Recommendation for Pharo

My Recommendation for Pharo

Everything is integrated

You need to think differently to C based languages

Extremely flexible

Git integration is not that good

Refactoring tools