What are the best programming languages for concurrent programming?

Question

23

Options
Considered

509

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Recs.

May 17, 2023

Last
Updated

Here’s the Deal

The Best 1 of 22 OptionsWhy?

Best programming languages for concurrent programming	Price	Current stable version	Site
90 Elixir	-	1.11.2	https://elixir-lang.org
79 Go	-	1.18	-
79 Rust	-	1.66	-
-- Clojure	-	1.10.1	www.clojure.org
65 Erlang	-	-	-

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21 Other Options Considered

Go

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

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

Specs

Current stable version:1.18

Platforms:Windows, Linux, Mac etc.

GZipped size:115 MB (installer)

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

Top Pro

Exceptionally 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

Performance is on the order of C and Java

Go is blazing fast like compiled languages, but easier to write just like 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

Top Pro

Built-in testing framework

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

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

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

Does not have sum types

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

Top Pro

Multi platform

Can compile for Windows, Linux, Mac, BSD etc. 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

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

No forms designer

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

Top Pro

Supports 'modules' in the form of packages

Every Go source file contains a package line that indicates which package a file belongs to. If the name of the package is 'main', it indicates that this is a program that will be compiled into a binary. Otherwise, it will recognize that it is a package. See More

Top Con

Issues with versioning packages

Versioning packages is still an issue in Go. 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

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. The workflow is comparable to that of a scripting language. 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. These both impediment performance. 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

Where are decent Windows GUI

Considering how long this language has been going and how popular it is, it is surprising Go doesn't have more GUI options, especially on Windows. See More

Top Pro

Provides tools for automatically formatting code for your entire software project

This helps keep every programmer on the same page in a project and eliminates arguments over formatting styles. See More

Top Con

Weak type system

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 Pro

Easy to install and configure; simple to compile software

Go software can be immediately installed, regardless of your operating system, package manager, or processor architecture with the go get command. Software is compiled statically by default so there is no need to worry about software dependencies on the client system. Makefiles and headers are no longer necessary, as the package system automatically resolves dependencies, downloads source code and compiles via a single command: go build. See More

Top Pro

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

Any variable, type and function whose name begins with a capital letter will be exported by a project, while all other code remains private. There is no longer a need to signify that a piece of code is 'private' or 'public' manually. See More

Top Pro

Provides tools for automatically formatting code for your entire software project

This helps keep every programmer on the same page in a project and eliminates arguments over formatting styles. See More

Top 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 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 Pro

Supports splitting source code into multiple files

As long as every source code file in a directory has the same package name, the compiler will automatically concatenate all of the files together during the compilation process. See More

Top Pro

Programmers don't have to argue over what 10% subet of the language to implement in their software project

The language promotes programming in a specific idiomatic style, which helps keep every programmer on the same page. See More

Top Pro

Supports functional programming techniques such as function literals

This naturally also supports first class and high order functions, so you may pass functions as variables to other functions. See More

See All

Rust

Top Pro

Built-in concurrency

Rust has built-in support for concurrency. See More

Top Con

Difficult to implement

Although the primitives are there, the language itself doesn't make it easy to use. See More

Maxwell Anderson's Experience

Rust cannot have data races. Yes, you heard me. Rust prevents data races at compile time. I have found that concurrency in Rust is intuitive and easy to use. There also many good libraries to build upon Rust's functionality. See More

Specs

Current stable version:1.66

Platforms:Linux, MacOS X, Windows, BSD

License:MIT/Apache

Top Pro

Catch errors at compile-time

Since Rust is statically typed, you can catch multiple errors during compile time. This is extremely helpful with debugging, especially compared with dynamically typed languages that may fail silently during runtime. See More

Top Con

Low readability

Harder to read and understand language. See More

Top Pro

Threads without data races

Unique ownership system guarantees a mutable data to be owned and mutated by only one thread at a time, so there's no data race, and this guarantee is checked at compile time statically. Which means easy multi-threading. Of course, immutable data can be shared among multiple threads freely. See More

Top Con

Low productivity

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

Top Pro

Makes developers write optimal code

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

Top Con

Significant time required to understand the language fully

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

Top Pro

Generics support

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

Top Con

Rust not as safe as it pretends to be

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

Top Pro

Compiles to machine code allowing for extra efficiency

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

Top Con

Long compile times

Way longer to compile than other languages. See More

Top Pro

Supports cross compilation for different architectures

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

Top Con

Steep learning curve

Pretty strict and hard to adapt for beginners. See More

Top Pro

Official package manager and build tool

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

Top Con

Very ugly and verbose syntax

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

Top Pro

Support for macros

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

Top Con

Hard to find learning resources or libraries

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

Top Pro

Easy to write understandable code

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

Top Pro

Zero-cost futures or Async IO

Top Pro

Easy to get started

Rust has a comprehensive and free online book to get started with Rust. See More

See All

Clojure

Top Pro

Async library for concurrent and asynchronous programming

The core.async library provides facilities for async programming based on channels and go-style blocks which act like light-weight process and run in Clojure and Clojurescript. 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

Specs

Current stable version:1.10.1

Platforms:Windows, Linux, Mac

Site:www.clojure.org

GZipped size:3.7Mb, requires JAVA

See All Specs

Top Pro

Lock free concurrency

Concurrency based on Software Transactional Memory (STM) and immutable values. See More

Top Con

Error messages can be difficult to understand

Error messages can be a pain. Sometimes they are easy to correct, and other times are very difficult to understand and trace. See More

Top Pro

Functional programming as main paradigm

Functional programming, immutable values, and data structures play pretty well with concurrency, combined with STM and other java based libraries like Quasar/Pulsar. 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 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

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 Pro

Dynamic language

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

Top Pro

Huge ecosystem of libraries to work with

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

Top Pro

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 Pro

Cross platform

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

Top Pro

No C/Java syntax

Refreshing, BTW! 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

Access to Java concurrency constructors

From the clojure site: "Clojure is designed to be a hosted language, sharing the JVM type system, GC, threads etc. It compiles all functions to JVM bytecode. Clojure is a great Java library consumer, offering the dot-target-member notation for calls to Java." 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

Erlang

Top Pro

Fault-tolerant

Fault tolerance means that a system has the property to continue operating even though one or more components have failed. For Erlang systems, this means that the system is kept running even if for example a user has to drop a phone call rather than forcing everyone else to do so. In order to achieve this, Erlang's VM gives you: Knowledge of when a process died and why that happened The ability to force processes to die together if they depend on each other and if one of them has a fault. A logger that logs every uncaught exception Nodes that can be monitored so that you find out when they go down The ability to restart failed processes (or groups of them) See More

Top Con

Eccentric syntax

Erlang's syntax may feel very strange to 99% of programmers who have never used it. This is because it does not share any similarities or common syntax definitions that are found in all the other languages that are used today. See More

Top Pro

Upgrade code without stopping the system

In a real-time system it may not be possible to stop the system in order to implement code upgrades. For these cases Erlang gives you dynamic code upgrade support for free when using OTP. The mechanism is very easy to understand and works as follows: Start the app Edit the code Recompile That's all that is needed, the app updates with the new code while it's still running and tests are run automatically. See More

Top Con

Useful in only one niche

Erlang is not really a general purpose language. It has a very special and well-defined niche where it towers above everything else. It's specialized in scalability and in distributed applications. Which is not necessarily a bad thing per se, but it still lacks and falls behind other languages when it needs to do things outside its niche. See More

Top Pro

Built from the ground up with concurrency and distributed computing in mind

Erlang has strong roots with the telecom industry in which concurrent processes are normal. It's designed to be concurrent, to be used for distributed computing and to be scalable. See More

Top Con

Maybe not the first choice for number crunching tasks

Top Pro

Battle proven

Erlang has been used in production for more than 20 years now. During that time it has proven itself over and over again that works great in both small startups and large-scale enterprise systems. Erlang has been used extensively by Ericsson themselves. For example, the AXD301 ATM, which is one of Ericsson's flagships is probably the largest Erlang project ever with more than 1.1 million lines of Erlang code. See More

Top Pro

Light processes

Erlang's processes have very little overhead (about 500 bytes per process). This means that a huge amount of processes can be created, even on older machines. See More

Top Pro

Actor model makes concurrency intuitive

The Actor model abstraction, fundamental to the language, is a natural way to think about concurrency. The actor model is similar to describing, "The man is walking his dog while the woman is driving the car. The stop light signals the driver to stop the car, and when the walk sign illuminates the man and dog begin crossing the street." Few other concurrency models are this easy to think about. See More

Top Pro

Consistency across platforms

Erlang's processes run in a complete independent way from the OS (they aren't managed by the OS scheduler neither). This means that programs written in Erlang will run exactly the same way regardless of the operating system or platform. See More

Top Pro

Great for writing distributed applications

Erlang is made to be parallel and distributed. Because it's very easy to write code that uses multiple processor cores, it's also very easy to write applications that span multiple servers. See More

Top Pro

OTP has already abstracted many parts of concurrent software

OTP has abstracted so many aspects of concurrent programming to such an extent, that most of what you want to do is already done. Much of your task will be implementing callbacks. Overall, it feels more like configuring a network of servers than it feels like programming. This is a good thing because it lets you focus on your program's behavior, not how you're going to specifically implement that behavior. See More

See All

Pony

Top Pro

It's way of guaranteeing lockless concurrency is mathematically proven

It was designed to assure concurrency. See More

Top Con

Few libraries

Top Pro

Concurrency model based on actors

The unique type system allows the compiler to automatically schedule actors on threads, giving you reliable concurrency for free. See More

Top Con

Unstable API

Pony is not ready for production. It has yet to release version 1.0, and there are frequent breaking changes. See More

Top Pro

High performance

Compiles to native code, and features an intelligent garbage collector that takes advantage of the actor architecture to get essentially free garbage collection. See More

Top Con

New language

It is not well known yet, but you can already find it in youtube videos. See More

Top Pro

Trivially simple C FFI

Calling low-level C functions is as simple as use "lib:clibrary" and @c_function_name[return_type](parameter:type). Linking C to Pony libraries is just as easy, as the Pony compiler will generate appropriate header files. See More

Top Con

Difficult learning curve

The type system uses a capabilities-oriented approach to reference semantics, which can be difficult to wrap your head around at first. The lack of more common object-oriented features and the preference for simplicity over familiarity can make it difficult for new users to model their program design. See More

Top Pro

Reliable

Because of its capabilities secure type system, provided you don't use the C FFI, references will never be stale, race conditions are effectively impossible, deadlocks don't happen because locks and mutexes are never needed, and processes never crash because all exceptions must be handled. (Barring compiler bugs or external memory corruption, of course.) Pony programs can still lock up due to infinite loops, like any Turing-complete language. See More

Top Con

Garbage collector can't run until you yield

A long-running behavior can leak memory because the garbage collector has no chance to run. See More

Top Con

All exceptions must be caught

The compiler enforces this, so code is littered with trys. See More

Top Con

Limited documentation

As Pony is such a new language, documentation is relatively light, and tutorials are few and far-between. See More

See All

Haskell

Top Pro

Lightweight threads

Top Con

Difficult learning curve

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

Specs

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

Paradigm:functional

Type System:static

Top Pro

Referentially transparent

Haskell's Purely Functional approach means that code is referentially transparent. This means that to read a function, one only needs to know its arguments. Code works the same way that expressions work in Algebra class. There's no need to read the whole source code to determine if there's some subtle reference to some mutable state, and no worries about someone writing a "getter" that also mutates the object it's called on. Functions are all directly testable in the REPL, and there's no need to remember to call methods in a certain order to properly initialize an object. No breakage of encapsulation, and no leaky abstractions. See More

Top Con

Symbols everywhere

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

Top Pro

Born to be immutable

Immutability gives stability and ideal parallelism. See More

Top Con

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

Top Pro

STM (Software Transactional Memory)

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

Top Pro

Highly transferable concepts

Haskell's referential transparency, consistency, mathematics-oriented culture, and heavy amount of abstraction encourage problem solving at a very high level. The fact that this is all built upon little other than function application means that not only is the thought process, but even concrete solutions are very transferable to any other language. In fact, in Haskell, it's quite common for a solution to simply be written as an interpreter that can then generate code in some other language. Many other languages employ language-specific features, or work around a lack of features with heavy-handed design patterns that discourage abstraction, meaning that a lot of what is learned, and a lot of code that is needed to solve a particular problem just isn't very applicable to any other language's ecosystem. See More

Top Con

Package manager is unstable & lacking features

Cabal (There are other choices but this is the most popular) can not uninstall a package. Also working at a few locations it is difficult to have the same environment for each one be the same. See More

Top Pro

Easy to read

Haskell is a very terse language, particularly due to its type inference. This means there's nothing to distract from the intent of the code, making it very readable. This is in sharp contrast to languages like Java, where skimming code requires learning which details can be ignored. Haskell's terseness also lends itself to very clear inline examples in textbooks, and makes it a pleasure to read through code even on a cellphone screen. See More

Top Con

Language Extensions lead to unfamiliar code

Haskell's language extensions, while making the language incredibly flexible for experienced users, makes a lot of code incredibly unfamiliar for beginners. Some pragmas, like NoMonomorphismRestriction, have effects that seem completely transparent in code, leading beginners to wonder why it's there. Others, like ViewPatterns, and particularly TemplateHaskell, create completely new syntax rules that render code incomprehensible to beginners expecting vanilla function application. See More

Top Pro

Popular in teaching

Haskell is really popular in universities and academia as a tool to teach programming. A lot of books for people who don't know programming are written around Haskell. This means that there are a lot of resources for beginners in programming with which to learn Haskell and functional programming concepts. See More

Top Con

Idiosyncratic exception handling

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 Con

You have to learn more than just FP

Haskell is not only a functional language but also a lazy, and statically typed one. Not only that but it's almost necessary to learn about monads before you can do anything useful. See More

Top Pro

Very few language constructs

The base language relies primarily on function application, with a very small amount of special-case syntax. Once you know the rules for function application, you know most of the language. See More

Top Con

Lazily Evaluated

Haskell's lazy evaluation implies a level of indirection - you're not passing a value, you're passing a thunk. This is often difficult to grasp not just for beginners, but for experienced programmers coming from strictly evaluated languages. This also means that, since for many, strict evaluation is their first instinct, initial expectations of a function's performance and complexity are often broken. Lazy evaluation can also mean that a computation which is supposed to happen on a separate thread actually just superficially starts its task before handing back control to the main thread, often requiring explicit forcing to ensure proper parallel or concurrent behaviour. See More

Top Pro

Open source

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

Top Con

Curried type signatures obfuscate what were the in and out types originally

Top Pro

Great support for writing eDSLs

Most of Haskell's features, including many of the concurrency ones, aren't really built into the language but defined as custom monads (or applicative-functors etc.) in some library. Anybody can define such monads themselves and thereby give the language an embedded domain-specific language that can be very well taylored towards an application with special demands. An example is the haxl library, which can automatically fetch external resources in a concurrent manner. Unlike in Lisp languages, this does not require unsafe macros etc.. 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

Mathematical consistency

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

Top Pro

Forces you to learn pure functional programming

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

Top Pro

Ergonomic threading API

forkIO is just so easy to use. See More

Top Pro

Has execellent guide

Simon Marlow's Parallel and Concurrent Programming in Haskell is a great guide for concurrency in Haskell (and concurrency in general). See More

Top Pro

Easy syntax for people with a STEM degree

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

Top Pro

Functions curry automatically

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

Top Pro

Quick feedback

It's often said that, in Haskell, if it compiles, it works. This short feedback loop can speed up learning process, by making it clear exactly when and where mistakes are made. See More

Top Pro

Easy refactoring

Pure functional style and referential transparency results in highly modular, composable programs See More

Top Pro

Powerful categorical abstractions

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

See All

V

Top Pro

Simplicity

V is simple and powerful. See More

CromulentCihuatecayotl's Experience

Easy to learn and use, yet powerful and versatile. Has the traits of high readability and maintainability. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, Linux, Mac

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

License:MIT

Developer:Alexander Medvednikov

See All Specs

Top Pro

Fast as C

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

Top Pro

Generics

V has generics. See More

Top Pro

Cross-platform

Compile to many OSes. See More

Top Pro

Supports concurrency and channels

Can run functions concurrently that communicate over channels. See More

Top Pro

Clear syntax

Highly understandable language. See More

Top Pro

Closures

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

Top Pro

High readability

Easier to read and understand programming language. See More

Top Pro

C Interop

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

Top Pro

Inline assembly

Can add Assembly code. See More

Top Pro

Sum types

V has Sum Types. See More

Top Pro

Single paradigm

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

Top Pro

Can create multi-OS GUIs

Multi-OS GUI creation is more integrated into the language than others. See More

Top Pro

Friendly and helpful community

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

Top Pro

Safety

V is very safe. See More

See All

Scala

Top Pro

Akka implements Actor Model

Get the same model of concurrency that Erlang uses in Scala. See More

Top Con

Mixed paradigm language

Scala’s support for both OOP and functional programming means you end up with something that is a mediocre mess between the two. See More

Specs

Current stable version:2.13.1

Site:scala-lang.org

Price:Open Source (Free)

Top Pro

Can use all the existing Java libraries

Scala can use all the powerful Java code out there, in particular the official Java APIs for async IO, ExecutorServices, etc. See More

Top Con

No mutual TCO in JVM

There will be no mutual tail-call elimination in Scala in the foreseeable future because of JVM limitations; but it is crucial for functional-style programming. You should use ugly trampolines instead. See More

Top Pro

Expressive functional programming abstraction for reusable and safe code

Top Con

Way too complex for beginners

Even for seasoned programmers it's a difficult language. See More

Top Pro

Immutability built in

By using val rather than var. See More

Top Con

Can be intimidating for beginners

Scala is an industrial language. It brings functional programming to the JVM, but not with a "start small and grow the language" perspective, but rather a very powerful language for professional programmers. See More

Top Pro

It's the language of Apache Spark

Apache Spark is the leading distributed big data platform. See More

Top Con

Shared memory processes

The JVM uses shared memory for processes, meaning you don’t get the same process protection you do in Erlang’s BEAM VM for example. See More

Top Pro

JVM

Now you can get sane concurrency on the JVM. See More

Top Pro

The best of OOP and functional programming

Scala unifies OOP and functional programming in a very powerful language. See More

See All

Java

Top Pro

Virtual thread with Project Loom

Top Con

Unnecessarily obtuse and verbose

If you like typing 40 lines of code to open a file, Java is the language for you. If, on the other hand, you’d actually like to get something done, look elsewhere. See More

Top Pro

Type-safe

It is easier to catch errors sooner. See More

Top Con

Memory hungry

Running the virtual machine, application server and application itself consumes significant amount of resources. See More

Top Pro

Mature ecosystem

The language and all its tools have enough time to age and they've aged well. See More

Top Con

Oracle

Enough said. In more detail: Oracle has acquired Java from Sun and continues to surround it with controversy ever since (legendary lawsuit with google, money extortion from the enterprise users etc.). See More

See All

Julia

Top Pro

Great standard REPL

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

Top Con

Young language with limited support

Julia was released in 2012. Due to it's short existence, there is a limited amount of support for the language. Very few libraries exist as of yet, and the community is still quite small (though growing quickly). See More

TirelessLeiGong's Experience

Easy to learn, great REPL, ability to attach to remote REPL, background compilation through Revise.jl ..... See More

Specs

Current stable version:1.5.3

Platforms:Windows, Linux, Mac, FreeBSD

Type Model:Dynamically Typed

Top Pro

High-level code

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

Top Con

1-based array and column major

This design probably comes from Matlab, but makes it unnatural to interface C and C++ and python. See More

Top Pro

Function and operator broadcasting

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

Top Pro

Almost as fast as C

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

Top Pro

Function overloading

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

Top Pro

Strong Metaprogramming

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

Top Pro

Strong dynamic typing

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

Top Pro

Nice regular syntax

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

Top Pro

REPL-based

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

Top Pro

Written in itself

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

Top Pro

Amazing learning curve

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

Top Pro

Powerful n-dimensional arrays

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

See All

Nim

Top Pro

Easy to read

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

Top Con

Concurrency in language is a disaster

Too difficult to use, too verbose. See More

Specs

Current stable version:1.6.12

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

GZipped size:13 MB

License:MIT

See All Specs

Top Pro

Strict typing

Checks your code at compile time. See More

Top Con

You won't get a job programming Nim

It's not a mainstream language. See More

Top Pro

Great metaprogramming features

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

Top Con

Failed wannabe Python knockoff language

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

Top Pro

Garbage-collected

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

Top Con

Atrocious error messages

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

Top Pro

Has built-in unittest module

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

Top Con

Inconsistent name formatting

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

Top Pro

Concurrency and parallelism

Nim uses async await to achieve concurrency. Like C#, Python, Hack, Dart, Kotlin, JavaScript and (soon) Rust (in fact, the Rust implementation is worthy of mention as it originally intended to be implemented via macros, it seems they gave up on that for now though. Nim's implementation is still 100% macro-based). Nim has spawn for parallelism, and you can also use channels if you wish. See More

Top Con

Lacks void / null safety

Easy to get involved in safety issues. See More

Top Pro

Has built-in async support

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

Top Con

Generics are a mess

Confused mishmash of conflicting ideas. See More

Top Pro

Supports UFCS (Unified Function Call Syntax)

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

Top Con

Weird thread model

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

Top Pro

Built-in Unicode support

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

Top Con

Community harsh if criticized

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

Top Pro

Type interferencing

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

Top Pro

Easy to integrate with another languages

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

Top Pro

Multi paradigm

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

Top Pro

Really cross-platform

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

Top Pro

Compile-time execution

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

See All

F#

Top Pro

Concise syntax

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

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

Top Pro

.NET Interoperability

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

Top Pro

Multiplatform, it runs on .Net Core

Forget Xamarin and Mono. F# now runs on the multiplatform .Net Core! See More

Top Pro

Very good for concurrency

Amazing language for parallelism, asyncronous and concurrent programming. See More

Top Pro

Allows writing predictable code

Like many other functional languages, F# takes a stance of immutability for most of its constructs (state, values etc...). There are several reasons why having immutable values is good. One of those is that the code you are writing becomes much more predictable and you don't have to worry about any side effects. See More

Top Pro

Type providers

Top Pro

Fall into the pit of success

F# directs you into a workflow where the right way is the path of least resistance. Coming from a C# background, its restrictions might feel arbitrary at first (e.g., what do you mean my code has to be in dependency order!? Arbitrary alphabetical or bust!), but you'll soon realize that your code is cohesive, concise and consistent in a way that it never was before - and you can compile and run with confidence! See More

Top Pro

Natively supported by Visual Studio

This is a .Net language natively supported by Visual Studio. Though it is not as tooled up as C# the support is still substantial. In particular, C# deployment scenarios can be enabled for it with small C# wrapper projects. Integration with Visual Studio provides: IntelliSense, debugging, projects an other features. See More

Top Pro

Easier transition from other paradigms

Since F# is not a purely functional language, it lends itself to being more easily picked up by programmers that have experience with other paradigms. See More

See All

D

Top Pro

Designed for concurrency and parallelism

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

WonderfulLlefelys's Experience

Separate memory arrangements for tasks prevents race conditions, where shared memory doesn't meant to be shared memory. So no silent implicit shared memory edge cases like in C and a cleaner setup of the threads. See More

Specs

Current stable version:2.101.2

Site:https://dlang.org/

Latest beta version:2.102.0-rc.1

Top Pro

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

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

Top Pro

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. And now it also has contract based programming. A feature formerly known to safe languages such as "Ada" and "Eiffel". See More

Top Pro

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

Top Pro

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

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

Top Pro

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

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

Top Pro

Has an improved C subset

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

Top Pro

Industrial quality

Top Pro

Easy to integrate with C and C++

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

Top Pro

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

Top Pro

Built-in Unicode support

Top Pro

Compile-time Function Execution

Top Pro

Provable purity and immutability

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

Top Pro

Static with type inference

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

Top Pro

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

Top Pro

Easy to read and understand code

See All

Swift

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Elixir

Top Pro

On the shoulders of giants

Elixir leverages the Erlang VM. See More

Top Con

Maybe not the first choice for number crunching

DaringPeckols's Experience

Building an Internet of Things app with Elixir at the device end and in the cloud. See More

Specs

Current stable version:1.11.2

Site:https://elixir-lang.org

GZipped size:3.61 MB (without required Erlang VM)

Top Pro

All the benefits and power of functional programming

Short, fast, maintainable Pattern Matching Guards Recursion Destructuring Immutable data See More

Top Con

Some design choices may seem strange

Some design choices could have been a little more appealing, for example: using "do...end" comes natural in Ruby for blocks but Elixir uses them for everything and it looks pretty weird: Enum.map [1, 2, 3], fn(x) -> x * 2 end or receive do {:hello, msg} -> msg {:world, msg} -> "won't match" end See More

Top Pro

Modern, developer-friendly design

From doctests to markdown in apidocs to powerful package management, Elixir is just an absolute pleasure to write code in. This is a modern language, not some remake of what programming looked in 50s and 60s. See More

Top Con

Deployment is still not as easy as it should be

Top Pro

Great for concurrency

Elixir leverages the existing Erlang BEAM VM which has one of the best performance for concurrent applications. All code runs inside isolated processes (note: not OS processes — they're lightweight "threads," in the same sense as Goroutines in Go) concurrent to one another, and it's capable of running in parallel across different CPU cores pretty much automatically, making it ideal in cases where concurrency is a core requirement. 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

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

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

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

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

Top Pro

Protocols, Macros and Pipelines

Inspired from Clojure. See More

Top Pro

Natural syntax inspired by Ruby

Lisp’s macros, Threading macros, perhaps Haskell-alike. See More

Top Pro

Macros are easy to write

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

Full access to Erlang functions

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

Top Pro

Great as a first functional programming language!

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

See All

The Best 1 of 22 OptionsWhy?

My Recommendation for Elixir

My Recommendation for Elixir

On the shoulders of giants

Maybe not the first choice for number crunching

All the benefits and power of functional programming

Some design choices may seem strange

Modern, developer-friendly design

Deployment is still not as easy as it should be

Great for concurrency

Great documentation

Easy to download libraries

Great getting started tutorials

Scalability

Types don't get in the way

Protocols, Macros and Pipelines

Natural syntax inspired by Ruby

Macros are easy to write

Powerful metaprogramming

Full access to Erlang functions

Great as a first functional programming language!

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

21 Other Options Considered

My Recommendation for Go

My Recommendation for Go

Great language for building networking services

Hard to abstract even the simplest notions

Exceptionally simple and scalable multithreaded and concurrent programming

Designed to make the programmer expendable

Performance is on the order of C and Java

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

Built-in testing framework

Doesn't have true enums

Automatically generates API documentation for installed packages

Does not have sum types

Multi platform

Golang controlled by Google

API documentation is rich in content; easy to memorize

No forms designer

Supports 'modules' in the form of packages

Issues with versioning packages

Multiple variables may be assigned on a single line

Easy to shadow variable

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

Performance slowdown because of indirect calls and garbage collection

Great team working behind it

Where are decent Windows GUI

Provides tools for automatically formatting code for your entire software project

Weak type system

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

Easy to install and configure; simple to compile software

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

Provides tools for automatically formatting code for your entire software project

Demonstrates a unique, simple concept to object-oriented programming

Built-in unit testing

Supports splitting source code into multiple files

Programmers don't have to argue over what 10% subet of the language to implement in their software project

Supports functional programming techniques such as function literals

My Recommendation for Rust

My Recommendation for Rust

Built-in concurrency

Difficult to implement

Catch errors at compile-time

Low readability

Threads without data races

Low productivity

Makes developers write optimal code

Significant time required to understand the language fully

Generics support

Rust not as safe as it pretends to be

Compiles to machine code allowing for extra efficiency

Long compile times

Supports cross compilation for different architectures

Steep learning curve

Official package manager and build tool

Very ugly and verbose syntax

Support for macros

Hard to find learning resources or libraries

Easy to write understandable code

Zero-cost futures or Async IO