What are the most enjoyable programming languages for web development?

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DevelopmentWeb Development

What are the most enjoyable programming languages for web development?

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Oct 16, 2023

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19 Options Considered

What are the most enjoyable programming languages for web development?	Price	Current stable version	Platforms
52 Elm	-	0.19.1	Windows Linux Mac Web
-- Golang	Free	1.21.0	Windows, Linux, Mac etc.
-- Clojure	-	1.10.1	Windows, Linux, Mac
-- Typescript	Free	3.7	-
-- Elixir	-	1.11.2	-

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score 33 · Answer 1

Elm

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

Limited amount of libraries

Third party library documentation is hosted on package.elm-lang.org, where you can find what's around. Compared to other languages, on the web or otherwise, there aren't very many libraries. Again a young language problem. See More

Zackie de Beer's Experience

Developed 2 large elm apps running in production for our company, considered and used angularjs, jquery, backbone, emberjs. See More

Specs

Current stable version:0.19.1

Platforms:Windows Linux Mac Web

GZipped size:23.2 kB

Top Pro

Pure functional and statically typed

Top Con

Small community

Top Pro

Clean syntax

No semicolons, weird operators, unpronounceable functions. Elm strives to have unsurprising naming and simplified syntax relative to other Haskell/ML-like languages. See More

Top Con

Lack of typeclasses

Elm doesn't have typeclasses which means some code needs to be duplicated. A fix in a function that needs typeclasses means all of the duplicates need to be fixed too. See More

Top Pro

Understandable error messages and other feedback

Error messages are carefully formatted with color highlighting and indicators. Errors also come with hints on how to fix problems. See More

Top Con

Not database-friendly

It is lots of work to make a server or database your "one source of truth", as Elm makes you write endless JSON parse boilerplate to talk to the server. 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

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

Scale without complications

The Elm architecture is a pattern you follow when writing modules, that enables you to scale your application without major complications. 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

Easy to debug

Elm has a time traveling debugger which helps a great deal with debugging. The absence of run-time errors also makes the surface area for things that can go wrong much smaller. 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

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 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

Editor support

Has great editor support. There are tools like elm-oracle which can be easily used via external application calls to make a plugin for a not yet supported editor. See More

Top Pro

Growing community

Elm is gaining popularity, somewhat faster than many of the other solutions here. This translates to more code examples, more documentation, and more libraries. 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

High-level Functional-Reactive Code

Build animations, games, and interactions with an incredibly small amount of terse, readable code. 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 Pro

Interactive Programming and Hot Swapping

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

Top Pro

Batteries included

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

Top Pro

Not quite Haskell semantics

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

Top 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

Good documentation

Elm is gaining popularity, somewhat faster than many of the other solutions here. This translates to more code examples, more documentation, and more libraries. See More

Top Pro

Easy to learn for beginners

Elm is easy and safe for your future. See More

See All

score 23 · Answer 2

Golang

Top Pro

Performance is on the order of C and Java

Go is blazing fast, but easier to write than Python, JS, Ruby, or many other dynamic languages. See More

Top Con

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

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

Specs

Current stable version:1.21.0

Platforms:Windows, Linux, Mac etc.

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

Top Pro

Great language for building networking services

Go was started as a systems language but now it has fully committed in the niche of networking services. This has been a brilliant move by Go because it allows them to capitalize on the immense talent of the Go engineering team (who are in the most part network engineers). In a world dominated by Java EE and slow scripting language, Go was a breath of fresh air and it continues to be one of the most powerful languages if you want to build networking services. See More

Top Con

Golang controlled by Google

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

Top Pro

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

The language is designed in a manner that seems logical. Syntax is simplified to reduce burden on the programmer and compiler developers. See More

Top Con

Doesn't have true enums

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

Top Pro

Great team working behind it

Go has a solid team of engineers working on it (some of the best networking engineers in the world are working on Go). Up until now, the great engineering of the language has compensated for its lack of power. See More

Top Con

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

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

Hard to abstract even the simplest notions

Go is famously regarded as very simple. However, this simplicity becomes problematic in time. Programmers who use Go find themselves over and over again writing the same thing from a very low point of view. Domains not already served by libraries that are easy to glue are very difficult to get into. See More

Top Pro

Jobs available

You can find a Job knowing Go. Which is more than can be said with many other languages. 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

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

Compiled binaries are fast — about as fast in C in most cases. Compiles on every OS without effort — truly cross-platform compiler. As a result of the fast compilation speed, you can use the gorun program to use go source code as if it was a scripting language. See More

Top Con

Requires specific directory structure and environment variable settings

Too much knowledge required for a first programming language. See More

Top Pro

Demonstrates a unique, simple concept to object-oriented programming

All types are essentially objects, be they type aliases or structs. The compiler automatically associates types to their methods at compile time. Those methods are automatically associated to all interfaces that match. This allows you to gain the benefits of multiple inheritance without glue code. As a result of the design, classes are rendered obsolete and the resulting style is easy to comprehend. See More

Top Con

Expects prior familiarity with tooling, "advanced" OS use

A standard step of even installing Go is modifying your path -- a person who's encountering their first language might not even understand. It's hard to escape using Go without familiarity with using build tools, managing and organizing project directories, etc. It's not as simple as Python's "just run the .py file with the interpreter." See More

Top Pro

Simple and scalable multithreaded and concurrent programming.

Simply prepend a function with go to execute it concurrently. Utilizes channels for communication between goroutines which aids to prevent races and makes synchronizing threads effortless. The maximum number of threads to use may be defined at compile time, even if that is limiting goroutines to run on one thread. See More

Top Con

Designed to make the programmer expendable

Go was designed for large team projects where many contributors may be incompetent. That Go can still get things done under these conditions is a testament to its utility in this niche. Go's infamously weak abstraction power is thus a feature, not a bug, meant to prevent your teammates from doing too much damage. This also means any team member can be easily replaced by another code monkey at minimum cost. Good for the company, bad for you. The more talented programmers, on the other hand, will be very frustrated by having one hand tied behind their back. See More

Top Pro

Easy to install and configure

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

Does not support circular dependencies

Top Pro

API documentation is rich in content; easy to memorize

Only features deemed critical are added to the language to prevent cruft from working it's way into the language. The language is small enough to fit inside one's head without having to repeatedly open documentation. Documentation is hosted on an official webpage in a manner that is simple to read and understand. See More

Top Con

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

Automatically generates API documentation for installed packages

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

Top Con

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 unit testing

The idiomatic approach to writing a Go software project is to perform test-driven development with unit testing. Every source code file should have an associated *_test.go file which tests functions in the code. See More

Top Con

No forms designer

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

See All

score 15 · Answer 3

Clojure

Top Pro

Minimal syntax

Being a LISP, programs are simple: they're just functions and data. That it doesn't get bogged down with syntax or the loftier FP concepts like monads makes it one of most approachable functional languages for beginners. See More

Top Con

Code tends to be nightmare to maintain for non-authors

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

SpiritedAchuguayo's Experience

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

Specs

Current stable version:1.10.1

Platforms:Windows, Linux, Mac

GZipped size:3.7Mb, requires JAVA

Site:www.clojure.org

Top Pro

Cross platform

Clojure compiles to JVM bytecode and runs inside the JVM. This means that applications written in Clojure are cross-platform out of the box. See More

Top Con

Too cult-ish

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

Top Pro

Huge ecosystem of libraries to work with

There's a very large ecosystem of high-quality Clojure libraries which developers can use. One example is Incanter. It's a great data analytics library and a very powerful tool for dealing with matrices, datasets and csv files. See More

Top Con

Syntax can be alien / jarring for those used to other Lisps

Perhaps some may consider this attribute an advantage, but I do not. Clojure does not attempt to maintain significant compatibility with other Lisps. So, if you already know a Lisp or are used to the way Lisp works in general, you'll probably be confused if you take a look at Clojure. See these resources for more details on this subject: https://clojure.org/reference/lisps http://stackoverflow.com/q/6008313/2636454 http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com/2015/01/one-major-difference-between-clojure.html http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/153128/166211 See More

Top Pro

Tries to solve problems as simply as possible

Simplicity is one of the pillars on which Clojure is built. Clojure tries to solve many problems in software development as simply as possible. Instead of building complex interfaces, objects or factories, it uses immutability and simple data structures. See More

Top Con

Tied to the JVM and it's limitations.

Some language constructs were obviously created as workarounds for JVM limitations. This makes the language much less elegant than it could have been. Also, the JVM has a very cumbersome FFI. See More

Top Pro

Immutability is the default

Clojure programmers are highly encouraged to use immutable data in their code. Therefore, most data will be immutable by default. State change is handled by functions (for transformations) and atoms (an abstraction that encapsulates the idea of some entity having an identity). See More

Top Con

Confusing error messages

Clojure's error messages more often than not are very confusing. They usually involve stack traces that do not thoroughly explain where the error was caused or what caused it. See More

Top Pro

Good for writing concurrent programs

Since Clojure is designed for concurrency, it offers things like Software Transaction Memory, functional programming without side-effects and immutable data structures right out of the box. This means that the development team can focus their energies on developing features instead of concurrency details. See More

Top Pro

No C/Java syntax

Refreshing, BTW! See More

Top Pro

Dynamic language

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

Top Pro

Rich Hickey

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

Top Pro

Extensible

Clojure has an elegant macro system which enables language additions, Domain-specific languages (DSLs), to be created much easier than most other languages (with the exception of Racket, perhaps). See More

Top Pro

Game is available with which you can learn Clojure

Nightmod is a tool used to make "live-moddable" games. It displays the game's code while you are playing and allows you to inject new code using Clojure. This can be a fun and useful experience for people trying to learn Clojure. See More

Top Pro

Great tool used in automating, configuring and managing dependencies available

Leiningen is a very useful tool for Clojure developers. It helps wiht automation, configuration and dependency management. It's basically a must for every Clojure project. See More

See All

score 8 · Answer 4

Typescript

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

Checks types a compile time

AlexHaxe's Experience

I've been using Typescript in a large project for at least 2 years now. I prefer Typescript over Javascript any day, but given the choice I prefer Haxe over Typescript. See More

Specs

Current stable version:3.7

IDE Support:Very good

Top Con

Syntax is too verbose

Top Pro

Developed and supported by a large company

Top Con

Can only transpile to Javascript code

If your front- and backend both run Javascript, Typescript is definitely an improvement over plain Javascript. However if your e.g. backend runs a different language, Typescript can't help you. See More

Top Pro

Strong typed language

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

Top Con

No support for dead code elimination

Typescript compiler does not remove dead code from generated file(s), you have to use external tools to remove unused code after compilation. This is harder to achieve, because Typescript compiler eliminated all type information. See More

Top Pro

Clear roadmap

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

Top Con

Small community

Top Pro

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

Top Con

Type checking not enforced by default

You have to use compiler flags to make sure it catches flaws like usage of implicit any, etc. See More

Top Pro

Debugging in Typescript code through source maps

Modern browsers support source maps, allowing you to debug generated Javascript code using the original Typescript code. See More

Top Con

No conditional compilation

There is no support for conditional compilation where you can mark certain parts of your code that only get included in the final product when a compiler switch was set. e.g. #if debug .... #end See More

Top Pro

Huge collection of extern definitions

Interface your code with existing Javascript libraries See More

Top Con

No support for conditional compilation

There is no clean way to have debug and release builds compiled from the same source, where the release version removes all debugging tools and outputs from the generated file(s). See More

Top Pro

Easy migration from existing Javascript code

Top Con

No Java-like package structure

Modules, namespaces and imports exist but they don't work like what people coming from Java development would expect I've been using Typescript for quite some time now, and I'm still not sure I fully understand them. See More

Top Pro

Checks syntax a compile time

Top Pro

Ability to do functional programming

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

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

Great support for React, integrated typed JSX parsing

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

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 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

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

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 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

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

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

See All

score 5 · Answer 5

Elixir

Top Pro

Great for concurrency

Leverages the existing Erlang BEAM VM. See More

Specs

Current stable version:1.11.2

GZipped size:3.61 MB (without required Erlang VM)

Site:https://elixir-lang.org

Top Pro

Friendly community

One of the most friendly community found on the internet, good videos on youtube. See More

Top Pro

Great documentation

Elixir's documentation is very good. It covers everything and always helps solving any problem you may have. It's also always available from the terminal. See More

Top Pro

Great getting started tutorials

The tutorials are very clear and concise (even for a person not used to functional programming). Plus they are also very mobile friendly. See More

Top Pro

Powerful metaprogramming

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

Top Pro

Scalability

Elixir programming is ideal for applications that have many users or are actively growing their audience. Elixir can easily cope with much traffic without extra costs for additional servers. More details can be found here. See More

Top Pro

Easy to download libraries

Comes with built in build tool called "mix". This will automatically download libraries and put them in the scope of the application when you add them to the "deps" function and run mix deps.get See More

Top Pro

Syntax is similar to Ruby, making it familiar for people used to OOP

All of the benefits of Erlang; without as steep a learning curve of prolog based syntax. Elixir is heavily inspired by Ruby's syntax which many people love. See More

Top Pro

Great as a first functional programming language

Top Pro

Full access to Erlang functions

You can call Erlang functions directly without any overhead, see here. See More

Top Pro

Types don't get in the way

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

See All

score 9 · Answer 6

Ruby

Top Pro

Elegant syntax

Ruby has a very clean syntax that makes code easier to both read and write than more traditional Object Oriented languages, such as Java. For beginning programmers, this means the focus is on the meaning of the program, where it should be, rather than trying to figure out the meaning of obscure characters. presidents = ["Ford", "Carter", "Reagan", "Bush1", "Clinton", "Bush2"] for ss in 0...presidents.length print ss, ": ", presidents[presidents.length - ss - 1], "\n"; end See More

Top Con

Meta-programming causes confusion for new developers

The ability for libraries to open classes and augment them leads to confusion for new developers since it is not clear who injected the functionality into some standard class. In other words, if two modules decide to modify the same function on the same class can introduce a number of issues. Mainly, the order in which the modules are included matters. Since you more or less can't tell what kind of "helper" functions a module might write into any class, or for that matter, where the helper function was included from, you may sometimes wonder why class X can do Y sometimes but not at other times. See More

Specs

Current stable version:2.6.0

GZipped size:15.9 MB

Top Pro

A Large Ecosystem of tools & libraries

Ruby has a large ecosystem of tools and libraries for just about every use. Such as ORMs (Active Record, DatabMapper), Web Application Frameworks(Rails, Sinatra, Volt), Virtualization Orchestration(docker-api, drelict), CLI tools(Thor, Commando), GUI Frameworks(Shoes, FXRuby) and the list goes on. If you can think of it, there is probably a gem for that ( and if not you can create your own and share with the community). See More

Top Pro

Hugely object oriented

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

Top Pro

Newbie-friendly community

Top Pro

Clean syntax

Ruby has a very clean syntax that makes code easier to both read and write than more traditional Object Oriented languages, such as Java. For beginning programmers, this means the focus is on the meaning of the program, where it should be, rather than trying to figure out the meaning of obscure characters. presidents = ["Ford", "Carter", "Reagan", "Bush1", "Clinton", "Bush2"] for ss in 0...presidents.length print ss, ": ", presidents[presidents.length - ss - 1], "\n"; end See More

Top Pro

Ruby on Rails

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

Top Pro

Test Driven Development, #1

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

Top Pro

Widely used

Ruby is one of the most popular languages for developing web sites. As a result, there's an abundant amount of documentation, sample code, and libraries available for learning the language and getting your project up and running. The most popular features are just 'gem install' away. Additionally, it is easier to find Ruby jobs because of this. See More

Top Pro

A large ecosystem of tools & libraries

Ruby has a large ecosystem of tools and libraries for just about every use. Such as ORMs (Active Record, DatabMapper), Web Application Frameworks(Rails, Sinatra, Volt), Virtualization Orchestration(docker-api, drelict), CLI tools(Thor, Commando), GUI Frameworks(Shoes, FXRuby) and the list goes on. If you can think of it, there is probably a gem for that ( and if not you can create your own and share with the community). See More

See All

score 8 · Answer 7

JavaScript

Top Pro

Simple syntax

The syntax is similar to written English and it's simple to learn. 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

KnowledgeableToci's Experience

Genuiely easy to learn but effort is needed to learn how to do things properly. This means learning is more engaging because you can get something working quickly, the downside is you can do it wrong and not know it until something wierd happens. See More

Specs

Engine:V8/ChakraCore

Author:Ryan Dahl/Joyent

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

Version(Latest):12.x

See All Specs

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 Con

Very confusing to read

If written poorly, and javascript will let you do this without real complaint (ignoring linters etc) 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 Con

Weird type coercions

'5' - 1 == 4, but '5' + 1 == 51. There are other examples that make even less sense. 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 Con

Easy to fall into bad manners and bad mind structure

It wouldn't consolidate a good mind structure for moving to other languages. Too open. See More

Top Pro

One of the most underestimated languages

Deviously simple in syntax, yet highly powerful in paradigms, this language does not force you to the (actually intrinsically broken) object oriented paradigm, has a healthy dose of functional programming inside, and does not bloat the keyword space. Good javascript is all about structure. Bad javascript is all about lazy hipsters not taking the time to learn 'javascript, the good parts', a must read. See More

Top Con

Each browser has its own quirks when executing the same code in some cases

Beginner programmers often make the mistake of coding something, seeing it works in the browser they tested it in, and then scratching their heads when it doesn't work in another browser. Ideally you'd want a language that works consistently across all platforms in order to be able to focus more on the programming and less on the underlying environment. It just takes time away from learning and forces you to spend time figuring out why this worked in browser X but not browser Y. See More

Top Pro

Great 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 Con

Not suitable for large projects

Writing large projects in plain Javascript is doable, but not recommended. 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 Con

Fast moving

The language and the web platform move fast these days. this makes it difficult for students as there is a lot of fragmentation and outdated information. 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 Con

Array-like objects

Many cases when you should get an Array, you just get an Array-like object instead and none of the Array methods work on it. 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 Con

Complex

JavaScript has a long litany of warts and gotchas. JavaScript will bite you if you're just a wee bit careless. You have to exercise a great deal of caution and awareness. You either have to know the entire 545-page ES6 spec to avoid them all, or use a linter to help restrict you from using the bad parts (and you still have to be familiar with the language), but beginners don't know these things. (Linters are also prone to time-wasting false positives.) This is a significant cognitive burden on even the experienced programmer (as if coding wasn’t hard enough already), but try learning to program in the first place on top of all of this and you'll understand that JavaScript is a terrible choice for the beginner. See More

Top Pro

Great tools for development

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

Top Con

Asynchronous coding is not easy for beginners

JavaScript can work synchronously but its current use is mainly around asynchronous instructions, and it's surely not a good way to start learning programming. 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

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

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 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

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 Con

Requires a second language for backend

Unless you use NodeJS on your server, you need a second language like Java or PHP to run your backend. 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

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

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

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

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 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 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

Top Pro

Easy to get into

All you need is a browser and a text editor. 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

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

See All

score 5 · Answer 8

Lua

Top Con

Easy to make mistakes when declaring variables

When writing a function, if a programmer forgets to declare a variable, that variable will be declared at global scope. The code will seem to run fine at first, but if another function uses a variable with the same name, but fails to declare it, it will create subtle, incredibly difficult to find bugs. See More

Top Pro

Tarantool and Redis native query language

Specs

Platforms:Windows, Mac, Android, Linux

Top Con

Some concepts may not be applied to other "mainstream" programming languages

Lua features a prototye-based inheritance model. While this is also used by Javascript, it's not used by many other mainstream languages, and so some of the concepts learned while learning Lua won't be very applicable to other languages. Another thing that makes Lua different from other programming languages, is the fact that Arrays start at 1 instead of 0. While helpful for beginners, it can complicate logic and make it very confusing when switching languages. See More

Top Pro

Clean and simple syntax suitable for beginners

The Lua syntax is modeled from Modula, a language known for being a fantastic introduction to programming. The Lua syntax also has the following key characteristics: Semicolon as a statement separator is optional (mostly used to resolve ambiguous cases as in a = f; (g).x(a)). Syntactic sugar for function calls (f'string', f"string", f[[string]], and f{table}) and method calls (obj:m()). See More

Top Pro

Fast

Lua's performance compares very well to other languages, If performance needs to be further improved you can: Implement critical parts in C Use the LuaJIT compiler. The LuaJIT compiler is a drop in replacement for the stock compiler and provides significant performance improvements. From the overview page: LuaJIT speeds can rival code written in C. See More

Top Pro

OpenResty

Existing web frameworks are mostly built on top of OpenResty. Because of that they have extremely high performance. See More

Top Pro

Simple

Easy to learn. See More

Top Pro

Helpful community

Due to the growing popularity, Lua has a rather large and helpful community surrounding it. See More

Top Pro

Embeddable

Many different game engines (e.g. Elder Scrolls series, ToME) use Lua for scripting, and it's runtime is designed for embedded use. See More

Top Pro

Very easy to integrate with C and C++

One of the best features of Lua is its very well designed C API. This is very useful if you have an existing C library you need to integrate with Lua or quickly get a Lua script running on the C side of the game. Finally Lua plays so nice with C that if you need to optimise for speed you can re-write it in C a lot easier than other languages. See More

Top Pro

Portable

Lua can be built on any platform with a ANSI C compiler. Other than that, Lua is extremely small. For example, the tarball for Lua 5.2.1 is only 245K compressed and 960K uncompressed (including documentation). When built on Linux, the Lua interpreter built with the standard libraries takes 182K and the Lua library takes 243K. The small size and the ability to build with a C compiler make Lua an extremely portable language that can run on a lot of different systems and computers. See More

Top Pro

Great documentation

The official Lua documentation is very helpful and thorough. There are also a large number of online resources or books with lots of helpful information for beginners and advanced users alike. See More

Top Pro

Luvit Framework for Node developers

Basically Node.js in Lua. See More

See All

score 12 · Answer 9

Python

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

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

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 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

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

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

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

Has many powerful web frameworks

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

Syntax is similar to spoken English

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

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

Powerful tools for data science and AI/ML

Whether you are reporting election results, forecasting stock returns, optimizing online ad clicks, identifying microorganisms in microscope photos, seeking new classes of astronomical objects, or working with data in any other field, Python has some of the best tools out there for answering this type of questions. 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

Active and helpful user community

comp.lang.python is particularly active and helpful, and StackExchange is another good option. 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

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

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

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. See More

Top Pro

Static typing via mypy

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

Top Con

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

One right way to do things

One of the Guiding Principles of Python is that there should be only one obvious way to do things. This is helpful for beginners because it means that there is likely a best answer for questions about how things should be done. See More

Top Con

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 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

Slow to run

Check for example the first result from Google. 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

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

Import Turtle

Do something visually interesting in minutes by using the turtle standard library package. Turtle graphics is a popular way for introducing programming to kids. It was part of the original Logo programming language developed by Wally Feurzig and Seymour Papert in 1966. Imagine a robotic turtle starting at (0, 0) in the x-y plane. After an import turtle, give it the command turtle.forward(15), and it moves (on-screen!) 15 pixels in the direction it is facing, drawing a line as it moves. Give it the command turtle.right(25), and it rotates in-place 25 degrees clockwise. Turtle can draw intricate shapes using programs that repeat simple moves. Example Turtle Star Drawing from turtle import * color('red', 'yellow') begin_fill() while True: forward(200) left(170) if abs(pos()) < 1: break end_fill() done() See More

Top Con

Version Confusion with V2.x and V3.x

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 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

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

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

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 Pro

Has features of both high and low level language

It is somewhere between C and Java. 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 Pro

Cross-platform

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

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

See All

score 5 · Answer 10

Haskell

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 Con

You need some time to start seeing results

Haskell's static typing, while helpful when building a project, can be positively frustrating for beginners. Quick feedback for errors means delaying the dopamine hit of code actually running. While in some languages, a beginner's first experience may be their code printing "Hello World" and then crashing, in Haskell, similar code would more likely be met with an incomprehensible type error. See More

Specs

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

Paradigm:functional

Type System:static

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 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

Compiler-assisted refactoring

Top Con

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

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 Con

Steep initial learning curve

Haskell lends itself well to powerful abstractions - the result is that even basic, commonly used libraries, while easy to use, are implemened using a vocabularly that requires a lot of backround in abstract mathematics to understand. Even a concept as simple as "combine A and B" is often, both in code and in tutorials, described in terms of confusing and discouraging terms like "monad", "magma", "monoid", "groupoid", and "ring". This also occasionally bears its ugly head in the form of complicated error messages from type inference. See More

Top Pro

Hand-writeable concise syntax

Conciseness of Haskell lets us to write the expression on the whiteboard or paper and discuss with others easily. This is a strong benefit to learn FP over other languages. See More

Top Pro

Many common bugs fail to compile

Top Pro

Terse

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

See All

score 6 · Answer 11

Crystal

Top Con

Aruguably no better than a meme language

The elitest attitudes in the community are unwarrented. Not recommendable for production use. Poor error messages, odd compiler errors, poorly documented behavior, etc.. See More

Top Pro

Compiles to native binary

HelpfulMorrigan's Experience

Crystal is very niche. Only those interested in Ruby will care, which means a small subset of the overall programming community. The real Ruby alternative that has gained mainstream success, is Elixir. Crystal devs, for the longest time, didn't even care about having a Windows version, so have nobody to blame but themselves when others don't take their language seriously. See More

Specs

Platforms:Linux, BSD, OSX

License:Apache v2

Developer:Ary Borenszweig, Juan Wajnerman, Brian Cardiff

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

See All Specs

Top Con

Small community

In regards to its age and already past 1.0, the community is still too small. See More

Top Pro

Elegant syntax as Ruby

Top Con

Slow compilation

Top Pro

Fast performance

Top Con

A language only Ruby fans can love

Ruby-ish language. See More

Top Pro

Has co-routine

Top Con

Not Cross-platform

No official Windows support. See More

See All

score 1 · Answer 12

F#

Top Con

Infested with OOP

Still relying on .NET OOP libraries. See More

Specs

Current stable version:6.0

License:Apache 2.0

IDE Support:Visual Studio, Code, Rider

score 6 · Answer 13

PHP

Top Pro

Most prominent language for web applications

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

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

TruthfulMorta's Experience

Been programming for over 40 years and when PHP entered the scene it was initially more of a Perl framework than a dedicated language. As the internet was new and PHP massively sped up dynamic web development, it exploded in popularity overnight and eventually evolved into a programming language. Most complaints about PHP is they didn't get it right on their first try, which is ironic as every new language will also have the same curve as it gains popularity and no language has yet to have the same overnight popularity explosion like PHP did. In the beginning PHP was so easy to use everyone was trying it to make their own dynamic websites. I saw folks who barely could use computers making web driven database applications. Sadly, many made tutorials but had bad coding practices. As the internet was new, the idea of cross site exploitations was mostly unheard of and PHP happened to be the major language driving most dynamic websites at the time so it got the brunt of the criticism. It is important to note, a number of other languages were taking notes and making changes to their codebase and documentation as they were just as vulnerable but being less popular they received a lot less criticism for it. I left PHP years ago for scripting languages when Python proved to be faster and I liked how it was more flexible and not designed more specifically for web technologies. Not only was Python faster at processing large amounts of GIS data, many GIS related libraries were written in Python, so the move made sense for me. During my time using Python, as it gained in popularity I heard many of the same issues come up again that PHP was so heavily criticized for and that seems to repeat every time a language gains popularity. However, I came back to PHP v7 once someone challenged me to process my large GIS datasets through PHP v7 CLI in speed comparisons. It finished so much faster, I initially believed the script was exiting prematurely. Now by pairing PHP v8 now with a solid framework like Laravel (who I believe has 8 full-time paid developers maintaining it), and a massive number of impressive tools like Psalm and PHPUnit, I can build/refactor complex and secure systems very quickly. With additions like Livewire now letting me use PHP in place of Javascript for front-end development, it can keep my tech stack insanely simple dramatically reducing cost overheads while still providing excellent performance and reducing turnaround time. At the end of the day, for most of my needs, PHP has helped me generate considerable more profits than any other language. The biggest challenge is PHP is still evolving fairly quickly and many updates break old code and libraries. This is frustrating but at the same time, it is good to see old code being forced to be updated or get abandoned as the less old code out there in the wild the further we get from their troublesome roots and the stronger the PHP community grows. See More

Specs

Current stable version:8.0

Price:Open Source (free)

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

Hard to get it right

Many of the numerous samples, tutorials and code fragments out there contain serious security flaws or other bugs, like inproper input sanitisation. Sometimes the authors don't know any better, and sometimes they know but forget to mention that their code is not suited for productive systems. And even if they clearly state that their code needs additional checks and pieces not shown, people might skip over those last words, because it "works". See More

Top Pro

Fast

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

Learned from troublesome root beginnings

PHP exploded in popularity when the Internet was new and with that came a lot of baggage. PHP has been evolving and now more frequently forcing breaking updates to finally see many of those old frameworks and libraries disappear from the ecosystem. v8 is fast and has more features than ever to make secure and fast cloud based development. See More

Top Pro

Easy to find help

PHP have a very large community making it easy find help. See More

Top Pro

Great documentation

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 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

Top Pro

Lots of tutorials online

See All

score 6 · Answer 14

Haxe

Top Pro

Checks types at compile time

AlexHaxe's Experience

I've been using Haxe for about 5 years now, mainly targeting PHP and Javascript development. I've also used Haxe to write C++ and Java applications for Linux, Windows. Mac and mobile (Andoid and iOS) See More

Specs

Current stable version:4.2.4

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

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Access native features of target platform

Whenever you need to use target specific code (e.g. there is no Haxe library or extern definitions), you can embed fragments as untyped code in your Haxe code. See More

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Transpiles to Javascript, PHP, Python and many other languages

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Dead code elimination

Removes unused types and methods during transpilation. See More

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Checks syntax at compile time

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Support multiple different platforms from one source

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Easy sharing of code accross multiple target platforms

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Provides an exit strategy for Flash developers through OpenFl

OpenFl is a library written in Haxe, that duplicates the Flash API, by providing a parallel implementation. Haxe's syntax has a lot of similarities with Actionscript 3. Flash developers can easily migrate their code to Haxe while still using and targeting Flash, in addition to unlocking all the new targets supported by Haxe / OpenFl. See More

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score 1 · Answer 15

Blazor

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Use existing .NET libraries

Allows to use .NET Standard libraries. See More

RickZeeland's Experience

Allows using C# instead of Javascript to develop Client and Server side applications. Client-side code can run directly in the browser, using WebAssembly. It even seems possible to have a single C# / .NET 6 hybrid Blazor app running in the Browser and on Desktop as a native app. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, Linux, Mac

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JavaScript interop

Call JavaScript APIs and libraries. See More

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Free and open source

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Answer 16

D

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Designed for concurrency and parallelism

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

Specs

Current stable version:2.101.2

Site:https://dlang.org/

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

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Industrial quality

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

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

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Doesn't force you to deal with memory management

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

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Unit testing built-in

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

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

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

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Easy to integrate with C and C++

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

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

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

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Built-in Unicode support

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Provable purity and immutability

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

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Compile-time Function Execution

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Has an improved C subset

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

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Static with type inference

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

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Very fast compilation

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

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Easy to read and understand code

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score 1 · Answer 17

Pharo

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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

Specs

Platforms:MacOSX; Linux; Windows

License:MIT

Typing discipline:Dynamically typed

Paradigm:Object-oriented

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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

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Remote debugging

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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

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Highly productive

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score 1 · Answer 18

Mint

Top Pro

Good Error Support

200+ unique error messages to help you on the way See More

Specs

Current stable version:0.5.0

Platforms:Mac Linux Web

Site:https://www.mint-lang.com

Price:Open Source

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Everything is typed.

Everything is typed using a simple type system See More

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HTML and CSS integration

HTML can be written with minimal differences Scoped . CSS can be written for elements in components See More

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Easy to learn and write

Everything is an expression See More

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Constructs for synchronous and asynchronous

Constructs for synchronous and asynchronous computations See More

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Writen in Crystal (Language)

Crystal is one of the best languages and elegant. See More

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Answer 19

C#

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Visual Studio

The Visual Studio IDE offers one of the best development environments. The Community Edition can be used for free. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, Linux, Mac, Web, Android, iOS

Language type:Interpreted

Current Stable Version:10

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3rd Party support

Lot's of tools and libraries available. See More

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Versatile

.NET offers rich functionality. See More

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Forms

Can be designed visually with the Visual Studio designer for traditional Windows forms, WPF, or Web forms. See More

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19 Options Considered

My Recommendation for Elm

My Recommendation for Elm

Super easy refactoring with very helpful compiler errors

Limited amount of libraries

Pure functional and statically typed

Small community

Clean syntax

Lack of typeclasses

Understandable error messages and other feedback

Not database-friendly

No run-time exceptions

Adds an additional layer of abstraction

Scale without complications

Poor Windows support

Easy to debug

Designed around high-level front-end development

Great and simple way to learn Purely Functional Programming

Missing syntactic sugar

Editor support

Growing community

Static module system

High-level Functional-Reactive Code

Inferred static typing

Interactive Programming and Hot Swapping

Batteries included

Not quite Haskell semantics

Good tooling

Good documentation

Easy to learn for beginners

My Recommendation for Golang

My Recommendation for Golang

Performance is on the order of C and Java

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

Great language for building networking services

Golang controlled by Google

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

Doesn't have true enums

Great team working behind it

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

Multiple variables may be assigned on a single line

Hard to abstract even the simplest notions

Jobs available

Easy to shadow variable

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

Requires specific directory structure and environment variable settings

Demonstrates a unique, simple concept to object-oriented programming

Expects prior familiarity with tooling, "advanced" OS use

Simple and scalable multithreaded and concurrent programming.

Designed to make the programmer expendable

Easy to install and configure

Does not support circular dependencies

API documentation is rich in content; easy to memorize

Implementation of interfaces are difficult to figure out

Automatically generates API documentation for installed packages

Performance slowdown because of indirect calls and garbage collection

Built-in unit testing

No forms designer

My Recommendation for Clojure

My Recommendation for Clojure

Minimal syntax

Code tends to be nightmare to maintain for non-authors

Cross platform

Too cult-ish

Huge ecosystem of libraries to work with

Syntax can be alien / jarring for those used to other Lisps

Tries to solve problems as simply as possible

Tied to the JVM and it's limitations.

Immutability is the default

Confusing error messages

Good for writing concurrent programs

No C/Java syntax

Dynamic language

Rich Hickey

Extensible

Game is available with which you can learn Clojure

Great tool used in automating, configuring and managing dependencies available

My Recommendation for Typescript

My Recommendation for Typescript

Too similar to Javascript