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What are the best languages to write a desktop Linux application in?

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Gambas vs Python vs Qt / C++

 vs Vala vs Rust vs C vs Golang vs Free Pascal vs OCaml vs Pharo vs Lobster vs FreeBasic vs C++ vs Nim vs JavaFX vs Any JVM language + Eclipse Rich Client Platform vs Javascript / GitHub Electron vs PyGObject / Python3 vs Perl vs Dlangui vs Lazarus vs GTK+

Specs

Platforms

Linux

Current stable version

3.18.2

GZipped size

-

Typing discipline

-

Language type

-

License

-

Price

-

Standard

-

Paradigm

-

Developer

-

Site

-

OS

-

Auto Complete

-

Current Stable Version

-

Engine

-

CPU

-

IDE Support

-

Top critics consensus

-

Compiles to

-

Visual GUI Builder

-

Current Version

-

Platforms

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

Current stable version

3.9.1

GZipped size

22.5MB

Typing discipline

Dynamically typed

Language type

Interpreted

License

-

Price

-

Standard

-

Paradigm

-

Developer

-

Site

-

OS

-

Auto Complete

-

Current Stable Version

-

Engine

-

CPU

-

IDE Support

-

Top critics consensus

-

Compiles to

-

Visual GUI Builder

-

Current Version

-

Platforms

-

Current stable version

-

GZipped size

-

Typing discipline

-

Language type

-

License

LGPL (for open source)

Price

Free (for open source)

Standard

-

Paradigm

-

Developer

-

Site

-

OS

-

Auto Complete

-

Current Stable Version

-

Engine

-

CPU

-

IDE Support

-

Top critics consensus

-

Compiles to

-

Visual GUI Builder

-

Current Version

-

Platforms

-

Current stable version

-

GZipped size

-

Typing discipline

-

Language type

-

License

-

Price

-

Standard

-

Paradigm

-

Developer

-

Site

-

OS

-

Auto Complete

-

Current Stable Version

-

Engine

-

CPU

-

IDE Support

-

Top critics consensus

-

Compiles to

-

Visual GUI Builder

-

Current Version

-

Platforms

Linux, MacOS X, Windows, BSD

Current stable version

1.71.1

GZipped size

-

Typing discipline

-

Language type

-

License

MIT/Apache

Price

-

Standard

-

Paradigm

-

Developer

-

Site

-

OS

-

Auto Complete

-

Current Stable Version

-

Engine

-

CPU

-

IDE Support

-

Top critics consensus

-

Compiles to

-

Visual GUI Builder

-

Current Version

-

Platforms

-

Current stable version

C'18

GZipped size

-

Typing discipline

static

Language type

imperative, ALGOL family

License

-

Price

-

Standard

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

Paradigm

imperative

Developer

-

Site

-

OS

-

Auto Complete

-

Current Stable Version

-

Engine

-

CPU

-

IDE Support

-

Top critics consensus

-

Compiles to

-

Visual GUI Builder

-

Current Version

-

Platforms

Windows, Linux, Mac etc.

Current stable version

1.21.0

GZipped size

-

Typing discipline

-

Language type

-

License

-

Price

-

Standard

-

Paradigm

-

Developer

Google with Ken Thompson, Robert Griesemer, Rob Pike

Site

-

OS

-

Auto Complete

-

Current Stable Version

-

Engine

-

CPU

-

IDE Support

-

Top critics consensus

-

Compiles to

-

Visual GUI Builder

-

Current Version

-

Platforms

Windows, Linux, Mac

Current stable version

-

GZipped size

-

Typing discipline

-

Language type

-

License

-

Price

-

Standard

-

Paradigm

-

Developer

-

Site

-

OS

-

Auto Complete

-

Current Stable Version

-

Engine

-

CPU

-

IDE Support

-

Top critics consensus

-

Compiles to

-

Visual GUI Builder

-

Current Version

-

Platforms

-

Current stable version

4.0.7

GZipped size

-

Typing discipline

-

Language type

-

License

LGPL version 2.1

Price

Open source (Free)

Standard

-

Paradigm

-

Developer

-

Site

http://ocaml.org

OS

Linux, Windows, OSX, BSD

Auto Complete

-

Current Stable Version

-

Engine

-

CPU

-

IDE Support

-

Top critics consensus

-

Compiles to

-

Visual GUI Builder

-

Current Version

-

Platforms

MacOSX; Linux; Windows

Current stable version

-

GZipped size

-

Typing discipline

Dynamically typed

Language type

-

License

MIT

Price

-

Standard

-

Paradigm

Object-oriented

Developer

-

Site

-

OS

-

Auto Complete

Y

Current Stable Version

6.1

Engine

-

CPU

-

IDE Support

-

Top critics consensus

-

Compiles to

-

Visual GUI Builder

-

Current Version

-

Platforms

Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, iOS

Current stable version

v2023

GZipped size

-

Typing discipline

-

Language type

-

License

Apache v2

Price

-

Standard

-

Paradigm

-

Developer

Wouter van Oortmerssen

Site

https://github.com/aardappel/lobster

OS

-

Auto Complete

-

Current Stable Version

-

Engine

-

CPU

-

IDE Support

-

Top critics consensus

-

Compiles to

-

Visual GUI Builder

-

Current Version

-

Platforms

Windows, DOS, Linux

Current stable version

1.05

GZipped size

11.3 Mb

Typing discipline

-

Language type

-

License

-

Price

-

Standard

-

Paradigm

-

Developer

-

Site

-

OS

-

Auto Complete

-

Current Stable Version

-

Engine

-

CPU

-

IDE Support

-

Top critics consensus

-

Compiles to

-

Visual GUI Builder

-

Current Version

-

Platforms

-

Current stable version

-

GZipped size

-

Typing discipline

-

Language type

-

License

-

Price

-

Standard

ISO/IEC 14882 or C++17

Paradigm

-

Developer

-

Site

-

OS

-

Auto Complete

-

Current Stable Version

-

Engine

UE4 , Cocos-2d-x

CPU

-

IDE Support

-

Top critics consensus

-

Compiles to

-

Visual GUI Builder

-

Current Version

-

Platforms

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

Current stable version

2.0.0

GZipped size

14,2 MB

Typing discipline

-

Language type

-

License

MIT

Price

-

Standard

-

Paradigm

-

Developer

-

Site

-

OS

-

Auto Complete

-

Current Stable Version

-

Engine

-

CPU

All CPU architectures that have an ANSI C compiler or JavaScript interpreter

IDE Support

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

Top critics consensus

Whitespace blues, inconsistent, weird, confusing, not mainstream, unsafe

Compiles to

C, JavaScript

Visual GUI Builder

-

Current Version

-

Platforms

-

Current stable version

-

GZipped size

-

Typing discipline

-

Language type

-

License

-

Price

-

Standard

-

Paradigm

-

Developer

-

Site

-

OS

-

Auto Complete

-

Current Stable Version

-

Engine

-

CPU

-

IDE Support

-

Top critics consensus

-

Compiles to

-

Visual GUI Builder

-

Current Version

-

Platforms

-

Current stable version

-

GZipped size

-

Typing discipline

-

Language type

-

License

-

Price

-

Standard

-

Paradigm

-

Developer

-

Site

-

OS

-

Auto Complete

-

Current Stable Version

-

Engine

-

CPU

-

IDE Support

-

Top critics consensus

-

Compiles to

-

Visual GUI Builder

-

Current Version

-

Platforms

-

Current stable version

-

GZipped size

-

Typing discipline

-

Language type

-

License

-

Price

-

Standard

-

Paradigm

-

Developer

-

Site

-

OS

-

Auto Complete

-

Current Stable Version

-

Engine

-

CPU

-

IDE Support

-

Top critics consensus

-

Compiles to

-

Visual GUI Builder

-

Current Version

-

Platforms

-

Current stable version

-

GZipped size

-

Typing discipline

-

Language type

-

License

LGPLv2.1+

Price

-

Standard

-

Paradigm

-

Developer

-

Site

-

OS

-

Auto Complete

-

Current Stable Version

-

Engine

-

CPU

-

IDE Support

-

Top critics consensus

-

Compiles to

-

Visual GUI Builder

-

Current Version

-

Platforms

-

Current stable version

-

GZipped size

-

Typing discipline

-

Language type

-

License

-

Price

-

Standard

-

Paradigm

-

Developer

-

Site

-

OS

-

Auto Complete

-

Current Stable Version

-

Engine

-

CPU

-

IDE Support

-

Top critics consensus

-

Compiles to

-

Visual GUI Builder

-

Current Version

-

Platforms

-

Current stable version

-

GZipped size

-

Typing discipline

-

Language type

-

License

-

Price

-

Standard

-

Paradigm

-

Developer

-

Site

-

OS

-

Auto Complete

-

Current Stable Version

-

Engine

-

CPU

-

IDE Support

-

Top critics consensus

-

Compiles to

-

Visual GUI Builder

-

Current Version

-

Platforms

Windows, Linux(Even Raspbian), Mac, Android

Current stable version

-

GZipped size

-

Typing discipline

-

Language type

-

License

LGPL

Price

-

Standard

-

Paradigm

-

Developer

-

Site

-

OS

-

Auto Complete

-

Current Stable Version

-

Engine

-

CPU

-

IDE Support

-

Top critics consensus

-

Compiles to

-

Visual GUI Builder

Yes

Current Version

2.2.0

Platforms

Windows, Linux, Mac

Current stable version

-

GZipped size

-

Typing discipline

-

Language type

-

License

-

Price

-

Standard

-

Paradigm

-

Developer

-

Site

-

OS

-

Auto Complete

-

Current Stable Version

-

Engine

-

CPU

-

IDE Support

-

Top critics consensus

-

Compiles to

-

Visual GUI Builder

-

Current Version

-

Pros + Cons

Pro
 Complete IDE for GUI development

You can't find such a level of easy GUI development in any other language on the Linux platform.
Comment

Pro
 Constantly updated

New features and bug fixes along with performance enhancements.
Comment

Pro
 Easy to get started for someone familiar with VB on Windows

Comment

Pro
 Complete application development suite

Supports GTK and QT along with web. Built in Form building with JIT speed. If you are developing an application targeting Linux only give this a look.
Comment

Pro
 Fast to write apps

Comment

Pro
 Git integration

Integration with GIT in IDE and easy to distribute apps as source package with export as .tar.gz.
Comment

Con
 Not cross platform

Comment

Con
 The documentation is not the best

Comment

Pro
 Enhanced with a new test suite

Comment

Pro
 Runs on Windows 10 WSL2 environment, reported successful compilation on MacOS

Comment

Con
 May have trouble interfacing to C code structs

Managed struct objects in Gambas makes it harder to use with C code structs.
Comment

Con
 Difficult to satisfy runtime requirements

Runtime requirements to run applications written in Gambas are not always easy to satisfy (that is, without installing the whole development environment).
Comment

Pro
 Easy to learn

Great syntax, easy to learn, easy to set up the dev. environment, many editors support it, has GTK bindings for GUI, etc.
Comment

Con
 The process of shipping/distributing software is relatively complicated

Once 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 is one correct way to do something."
Comment

Con
 Too opinionated for a general-purpose programming language

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

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.
Comment

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.
Comment

Con
 Arch Linux Python system applications breaks when you upgrade python

More details can be seen here and here
Comment

Con
 Packaging can be a nightmare

Packaging is always a nightmare imo, but with Python there have been so many changes and deprecations. DistUtils has been removed. Now setup.py and setup.cfg is deprecated, and the Debian tools for building packages have their own compatibility issues adding pain on top of these.
Comment

Con
 Painful to manage system dependencies

If you want to make a desktop application as a system package like Debian, you have no control of the system python version. So you end up having to support very old Python version for LTS Ubuntu while also having to ensure compatibility with the newest versions for rolling release distros like Arch. And you also can only use the dependencies and the versions of the dependencies the system supports. Furthermore development tools like mypy, pytest etc have gistorically stopped supporting old python version before Ubuntu LTS does, making it painful for this reason also. Note that Flatpak solves this, by using vendored dependencies and pyenvs, assuming you can use it and don't want to support anything else.
Comment

Con
 Bad for games

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

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.
Comment

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.
Comment

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.
Comment

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.
Comment

Pro
 GTK support through PyGObject

GTK has official bindings to Python, which makes it relatively easy to use for GTK development.
Comment

Pro
 Widely available

The majority of linux distributions come with python preinstalled, so your program will work without any dependency installation
Comment

Pro
 Cross-platform

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

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.
Comment

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.
Comment

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.
Comment

Pro
 It's really simple

It's very simple for understanding how programming works.
Comment

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.
Comment

Con
 Relatively slow

Since Python is an interpreted language, the performance will be obviously worse than of a native program.
Comment

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.
Comment

Con
 Unflexible userbase

You will be expected to rigidly stick to the coding practices and to do everything by-the-numbers.
Comment

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.
Comment

Con
 Version Confusion with V2.x and V3.x

Comment

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.
Comment

Con
 Worst language design ever

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

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.
Comment

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.
Comment

Pro
 Easy to learn, More to Go

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

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.
Comment

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.
Comment

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.
Comment

Con
 Slow to run

Check for example the first result from Google.
Comment

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.
Comment

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.
Comment

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.
Comment

Pro
 Good introduction to datatypes

Python's built-in support and syntax for common collection types 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.
Comment

Pro
 Active and helpful community

Python has an active and helpful community, such as the comp.lang.python Google Groups, StackOverflow, reddit, etc.
Comment

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.
Comment

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.
Comment

Pro
 Has features of both high and low level language

It is somewhere between C and Java.
Comment

Pro
 Good documentation

Professional, thorough documentation with examples, available either in a web browser or in the stand-alone desktop client called assistant.
Comment

Pro
 Portable

Linux, BSD, Android, iOS, Windows, Mac, Blackberry ... Qt has 'em all.
Comment

Pro
 Global community

The community behind Qt is both massive and approachable. Digia (also owners) are joined by the likes of Intel, KDAB, ICS, Canonical and numerous others in sponsoring development, while communities such as KDE also contribute significantly. Forums are active, mailing lists are open, irc channels chatting, git repositories well managed. Answers to questions are usually minutes away.
Comment

Con
 Not free/expensive

Free version is limited and prohibitive.
Comment

Pro
 QML

QML is "HTML5 done right": a declarative language that integrates beautifully with C++ code when necessary and exposes the power of the GPU ... simply the best way to create a modern GUI in terms of effort and results.
Comment

Pro
 LGPL license

Comment

Pro
 Open Source

Qt is licensed under a OSS license through a dual-license policy.
Comment

Con
 C++

Comment

Pro
 Rich GTK Support

Vala developed by Gnome Foundation.
Comment

Pro
 Fast

Underneath there is C. It makes some stuff easier to write than it would be with plain C code.
Comment

Pro
 Easy Syntax

Vala is syntactically similar to C# and includes several features such as: anonymous functions, signals, properties, generics, assisted memory management, exception handling, type inference, and foreach statements
Comment

Pro
 C compatible API (and ABI)

C programs can use libraries written in Vala, and vice versa.
Comment

Pro
 Good documentation

There is Valadoc and most of the libraries have Devhelp packages.
Comment

Con
 Very few resources allocated to the language

Only a single person is working on Vala full time. Gnome Foundation isn't allocating sufficient resources to properly maintain Vala.
Comment

Con
 A very naïve approach to the real problem

Vala just adds more complexity to the game. No real benefits in using a 'programming language emulator' for UI code, you may think it adds to productivity but it's just a way to make the problem last longer, reinventing the wheel everytime and worse.
Comment

Con
 Very limited adoption

Vala isn't used in areas other than GTK development, and no major business has adopted the language.
Comment

Pro
 Well-integrated with C language

Vala itself is compiled to C, therefore it can use the vast ecosystem of C language, with least effort.
Comment

Con
 Not a general purpose language

Can't use Vala in multiple software development areas.
Comment

Pro
 Stable ABI

You can write a library with ABI stability.
Comment

Pro
 A general purpose language

Vala is compiled to C and only requires GLib - or even nothing (posix profile)
Comment

Con
 Very limited tooling

Though using Gnome Builder, you can debug it easily.
Comment

Con
 Heavy reliance on GObject

Heavy reliance on GObject types, although Vala can be used without GObject. (posix profile)
Comment

Con
 Not well documented

It already has tons of documentation, even a book about Vala.https://leanpub.com/vala https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/Vala/Documentation
Comment

Con
 No stable version

No stable version of Vala released for over a decade so far. Means that Vala isn't production ready.
Comment

Con
 Scarce learning resources

Difficult to find good resources for learning Vala.
Comment

Con
 Difficult to debug programs

Try Debug in Gnome Builder, it works perfectly.
Comment

Pro
 Built-in concurrency

Rust has built-in support for concurrency.
Comment

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.
Comment

Pro
 Generics support

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

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.
Comment

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.
Comment

Pro
 Cross platform

Compiling for another platform is simple via Cargo.
Comment

Pro
 Zero-cost futures or Async IO

Comment

Con
 Juvenile ecosystem

Libraries for writing applications are still unstable.
Comment

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
Comment

Con
 Terrible for a desktop GUI application

Frameworks / Toolkits are developed by small teams and are not mature.
Comment

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.
Comment

Con
 Very new and untested

Comment

Con
 Asynchronous I/O is not (yet) a part of the core language

The issue of asynchronous I/O is still being discussed as a language feature, and not yet in the implementation phase. See the RFC on GitHub here.
Comment

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.
Comment

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.
Comment

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.
Comment

Pro
 Portable

C is portable between most hardware. Generally a C compiler is made for any new architecture, and already exists for existing architectures. C is portable between all operating systems (Windows, UNIX and Mac) and only needs a program to be recompiled to work. This allows anyone on any operating system to learn about the language and not be held back by intricacies of their operating system. With this said, C's portability these days is not quite what it used to be. Much of said portability relies on the POSIX standard in particular, and as time passes, the compliance of a given system with that standard is becoming less certain; especially in the case of Linux. Most things will still be portable (or at least emulatable) between Windows, Linux, and FreeBSD for example; but you will at times need to make use of platform-specific support libraries for certain individual cases, as well.
Comment

Pro
 More control over the code

Comment

Pro
 Understanding of computers

Learning C forces you to grapple with the low-level workings of your computer (memory management, pointers, etc.) in ways that the other languages abstract away. Without an understanding of these low-level aspects of computer programming you will be limited if you try to develop an application that needs to run in a memory or performance constrained environment. Other languages like Python can obscure a lot of details, so your foundation may be weaker.
Comment

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

It sets an early bar that if you can't hurdle you might as well do something other than programming and not waste any more of your time.
Comment

Pro
 Must-have

Capability to program in C is greatly appreciated in developers, creates an image of competency, and many programmers will learn it at some point in their careers.
Comment

Pro
 C is simple with lesser rules than any other language

C is standardized and it is the goto language when you have to speed things up
Comment

Pro
 The king of languages, imitated, extended but never equalled

Made of a small set of keywords and rules, only your imagination is the limit. Above all, when it comes to 'pro' programming, C is the only one to rely on.
Comment

Pro
 Portable between CPU architectures

C was designed to be independent of any particular machine architecture, and so with a little care, it is easy to write "portable" programs (see here). By design, C provides constructs that map efficiently to typical machine instructions, and therefore it has found lasting use in applications that had formerly been coded in assembly language like operating systems or small embedded systems.
Comment

Pro
 Easy to drop down to assembly.

Sometimes you really need to program directly in assembly. C’s ABI and common compiler extensions make this a piece of cake.
Comment

Pro
 Teaches good practices

Writing in C will require you to understand how things are done. C implies using and understanding the fundamentals. Learning a higher-level language after is much easier.
Comment

Pro
 Industry standard

C is the industry standard programming language, moreover, it is the most popular programming language to use. C is the language used for most Windows, UNIX and Mac operating systems.
Comment

Pro
 Helps with learning other languages later

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

Pro
 Low level of abstraction

While higher level languages languages like Java and Python provide possibilities to be "more expressive" per line of code, it's much more convenient to start with "less efficient" (get me right) language, in order to get initial concepts of how things behave at lower level. Actually C is a good starting point moving to both higher and lower levels of abstraction, the good example here would be learning C before Assembler, as for general use the Assembler quite hard to understand due to low level of its abstraction (like getting the understanding on how loops work in C before trying to implement them on Assembler).
Comment

Pro
 Basic concepts can be applied to accelerate learning any other language

You can easily pivot knowledge learned here and apply it to almost every other language.
Comment

Con
 Requires memory management

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

Con
 Completely lacks type safety

The C standard library is not type safe, and the language itself does not promote type safety built into the language, which leads to error-proneness of the language. If anything, it would be recommended that those interested in C to instead put their time in D, which actually includes a complete copy of the C standard library rewritten to be fully type safe.
Comment

Con
 The need for C developers in the current market is very low, and trending downward

Older languages, like C, are no longer in their hay day. Even if you do learn it as your first language, you are only setting yourself up to need to learn another language in the long run. If you want a skill that you can not only learn from, but also potentially build a career on, C should not be your first choice.
Comment

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.
Comment

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.
Comment

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.
Comment

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.
Comment

Con
 No forms designer

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

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
Comment

Con
 Lacks support for immutable data

Only way to prevent something from being mutated is to make copies of it, and to be very careful to not mutate it.
Comment

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.
Comment

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.
Comment

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.
Comment

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.
Comment

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.
Comment

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.
Comment

Con
 No real support for desktop graphics

Perhaps the new HTML5 support may fix that soon.
Comment

Con
 RAM hog

A less organised RAM garbage disposal & swap system than languages like HaXe or C#.
Comment

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.
Comment

Pro
 API documentation is rich in content; easy to memorize

Only features deemed critical are added to the language to prevent cruft from working its 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.
Comment

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.
Comment

Pro
 Exceptionally simple and scalable multithreaded and concurrent programming

Goroutines are "lightweight threads" that runs on OS threads. They provide a simple way for concurrent operations — prepending a function with go will execute it concurrently. It utilizes channels for communication between goroutines which aids to prevent races and makes synchronizing execution effortless across goroutines. The maximum number of OS threads goroutines can run on may be defined at compile time with the GOMAXPROCS variable.
Comment

Con
 Does not support circular dependencies

Comment

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.
Comment

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.
Comment

Con
 Requires specific directory structure and environment variable settings

Too much knowledge required for a first programming language.
Comment

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."
Comment

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.
Comment

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.
Comment

Pro
 Cross platform

Many target platforms and architectures.
Comment

Pro
 Fast compiler

Very fast, even big programs compile very quickly.
Comment

Pro
 Easy to learn

Comment

Pro
 Easy and fast interface

Comment

Pro
 Powerful

Close to metal while being high level, performance to match C/C++
Comment

Pro
 Compiler creates very fast code

The compiler result competes with C and C++.
Comment

Pro
 Sophisticated and easy-to-use package manager

OPAM is a package manager for OCaml, which is really easy to use, just like npm. It creates a .opam folder in home directory. The documentation is great as well, and you can switch between multiple versions of OCaml for each project. You can also package your project and publish it on OPAM repositories, even if the dependencies do not exists on OPAM.
Comment

Pro
 Actively-developed functional programming language at the forefront of research

Functional programming is based on the lambda calculus. OCaml is in its functional parts almost pure lambda calculus, in a very practical manner: useful for many daily programming tasks. The acitve development makes improvements to the type system like generalized algebraic data types (GADT) or polymorphic variants, so when learning this language you get at once a down to earth usable compiler and advanced abstraction features.
Comment

Pro
 A practical approach to functional programming

E.g. Data elements are immutable by default but can be explicitly set to mutable if required. For .. loops are available.
Comment

Pro
 Multi-paradigm language

Ocaml is a very strong functional programming language but also supports some object oriented programming techniques.
Comment

Pro
 Strong editor integration

The merlin editor tool provides all you need to develop OCaml in your favourite editor.
Comment

Pro
 Encourages functional style

It steers you towards a functional style, but doesn't bother you with purity and "monads everywhere" like other languages, such as Haskell.
Comment

Pro
 Stable syntax

The syntax is consistent, some syntaxic sugar but at a reasonable level, so reading code of others isn't too much confusing.
Comment

Pro
 One of the best for writing compilers

OCaml is compiled to native binary, so it's amazingly fast. Being a member of ML-family languages, it has expressive syntax for trees, and has great LLVM support.
Comment

Pro
 Portable across the main OSs

Comment

Pro
 Highly ergonomic

Applications written in Pharo are both enjoyable to use and to write. The introspective tools of the IDE are a great example.
Comment

Pro
 Easily learnt

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

Pro
 Beautiful coding patterns in your IDE

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

Pro
 Highly ergonomic

Tools written in Pharo are both enjoyable to use and to write.
Comment

Pro
 WebAssembly backend

More options for users.
Comment

Pro
 Type inference algorithm

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

Pro
 Inline structs

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

Pro
 Compile time reference counting

Unlike Rust doesn't make the programmer jump through hoops, mainly automatic. Does an analysis similar to the Rust borrow checker to infer lifetimes, but makes life easier on the programmer.
Comment

Pro
 Automatic memory management

Better than Rust. No sadism.
Comment

Pro
 Python-esque syntax

There's an audience who loves that.
Comment

Con
 Small community

Lead doesn't appear to be so ambitious or has a vision to push making more popular.
Comment

Con
 Python-like syntax, but different use case and domain

Not Python compatible and often significantly different in purpose and use cases.
Comment

Pro
 Huge language supports most everything

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

Pro
 Powerful memory management

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

Pro
 Excellent compiler optimization

Both open source compilers (such as Clang and GCC), and proprietary ones (like Intel's and Microsoft's) are very good at analyzing program flow and program optimization. This is mostly due to the widespread usage of C/C++ applications running everything from mobile/desktop/server Operating Systems, to search engines and webserver software, and the demand for performance.
Comment

Pro
 Teaches problem solving

The great STL is the most powerful Data Structure and Algorithms Library. It would benefit you very much in problem solving, your main main way to love programming. The code is much compact compared to Java and C#. No unnecessary classes are in your way; yet when you need classes they are available unlike C. The code runs very fast.
Comment

Pro
 Teaches fundamental OOP

Teaches you to leverage object oriented programming.
Comment

Pro
 Teaches low-level programming, but doesn't have as many pitfalls as C

Teaches data types, low-level program flow and the so common C-style syntax while not being as much of a pain as C itself.
Comment

Pro
 STD is often updated

The functionalities keep growing throughout the years. C++11 gave us a soft type of garbage collecting with the smart pointers.
Comment

Pro
 Best way to understand algorithms

Comment

Pro
 C code can be used in C++ code

Most C code will work as C++.
Comment

Con
 Concurrency hard to use

Difficult to use, too verbose.
Comment

Con
 Atrocious error messages

Unhelpful to users, wasting hours deciphering and extremely annoying.
Comment

Con
 Lacks void / null safety

Easy to get involved in safety issues.
Comment

Con
 Memory management disasters

Will be stuck with bad performance while choosing from all kinds of memory management options that aren't good.
Comment

Con
 Does not automatically give you a pure platform look and feel

Cannot be used with non-JVM languages.
Comment

Pro
 FX uses hardware acceleration and Java is fast, so good for 2D action games

Also has many built-in effects, like scale, rotate, color shifting, etc. The look and feel is simple to change later, as it uses Cascaded Style Sheets.
Comment

Pro
 Cross platform

Comment

Pro
 Has a rich library of UI components SWT + JFace

Comment

Pro
 You can use any JVM language

Java, Clojure, JRuby, Groovy, Kotlin are some options.
Comment

Pro
 There is a technology to deploy updates with update site

Comment

Pro
 Beautiful UIs

Comment

Pro
 You can embed a lot of Eclipse technologies to your application, such as BIRT for reports for example.

Comment

Pro
 Uses native UI elements

Comment

Con
 It is worth only for serious B2B applications and rich professional tools, not for consumer applications

It is because JVM is very huge prerequisite to have on consumer's machine. Also JVM uses more memory, than native technologies. Also Rich Client Platform applications looks specific, that is OK for Business applications, but weird for consumer products. I would recommend EclipseRCP as an alternative to modern web SPA (Single Page Application) approach in B2B sector.
Comment

Pro
 Works on Linux, Windows, Mac

Being powered by Javascript, apps build with Electron can be packed to run on all 3 platforms.
Comment

Con
 Low performance

Electron applications use significantly more CPU, RAM, and disk space than applications written in almost any other framework. This results in poor battery life as well as an unpleasant user experience.
Comment

Pro
 Wide spread support

Javascript is a very easy language to learn, and is handy for all manner of other things. There's a good chance you already know it, or that you will need to know it in the future.
Comment

Con
 Backwards incompatibility between versions

Electron is growing and constantly changing, but there is no care whatsoever whether the changes in a new version will break your application or not. Even if you write and maintain one app, changes to how Electron handles JS files and functions will make maintenance of a single app your full time job. Even the development process, programming mindset and tooling changes between versions, so there is no guarantee that your app will even have a proper architecture a year from when you've built it.
Comment

Pro
 WebApps without additional work

If you don't require native features and could write a web app (i.e. a website with dynamic elements), then you could just extend it and turn it into a native app. This means that people just need to type your URL to use you app and may get more by downloading and installing it.
Comment

Con
 Doesn't work well if you're targetting Windows, even though there probably is a binding

Not very close to Windows look and feel.
Comment

Pro
 Works particularly well on Linux, as many desktops use Python and GObject

GObject is a 'C' library with bindings to many other languages, so can be widely used. Nice GTK.UIManager function to produce a menu system from a string.
Comment

Pro
 Tons of modules (CPAN)

Comment

Pro
 Cross-platform

Comment

Pro
 Large community (forums, irc)

Comment

Pro
 Native and powerful regex engine

Comment

Pro
 Powerful string matching abilities

Comment

Pro
 Very fast excecution time

Usually 5 times faster than Python and 10 times than TCL.
Comment

Con
 Some programmers use bad style when writing modules

Many examples and modules are intended to obfuscate or impress with the succinct nature of Perl over the ease of readability.
Comment

Pro
 The fastest and easiest

Lazarus makes it easy to rapidly develop visual applications for Linux, Mac, and Windows. Single codebase for all platforms, provided you avoid platform specific functionalities.
Comment

Pro
 Low learning curve

Familiar language, helpful compiler, intuitive form designer
Comment

Pro
 Great technical support

Fully documented, large third party support and active user forum.
Comment

Pro
 Multi-platform compatibility

Lazarus works across several platforms: Linux, Mac, and Windows.
Comment

Pro
 A lot of libraries

The most of well known libraries are supported.
Comment

Pro
 Free alternative to Delphi

Comment

Pro
 Connection to almost any RDBMS

Comment

Con
 Not actually delphi

It's close,. looks and feels the same. But not actually Delphi.
Comment

Pro
 Free alternative to Delphi.

Comment

Con
 Buggy

Has some "weird" bugs according to some.
Comment

Con
 Support from leading IDEs may not be as good as for other languages

Support for Object Pascal in mainstream IDEs, like Eclipse and IntelliJ, is a bit lacking (limited debugging support, syntax highlighting is not current, etc). There are great alternative, feature-complete IDEs.
Comment

Con
 Object Pascal is considered obsolete by some

Unfortunately Object Pascal is considered by some as obsolete, thus it can be difficult to find a developer base for your project, and having an expertise on Object Pascal would hardly help you getting a job position
Comment
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