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Add to SafariWhen comparing Pony vs PureBasic, the Slant community recommends PureBasic for most people. In the question“What are the best systems programming languages?” PureBasic is ranked 27th while Pony is ranked 29th. The most important reason people chose PureBasic is:
Can create single file executables without the need to install other libraries, run time environments, etc.
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
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.
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.
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.
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.
Pro Standalone executables
Can create single file executables without the need to install other libraries, run time environments, etc.
Pro The syntax is very beginner-friendly
Pro Same code on Windows, OS X and Linux
Same code can be compiled natively, without any interpreter for OS X, Windows or Linux, using the native GUI toolkit of the OS
Pro Many integrated features
Many libraries available without additional installations : 2D & 3D, database, network, sound, xml, JSON, http...
Pro Allows to program at a lower level than most alternatives
Pro Lifetime license
Pay once, use forever.
Pro Constantly updated
Pro Supports ARM in addition to x86, AMD64 and others
Pro Can compile to plain C code
Pro Grest user community / forums with the developer very active
Cons
Con All exceptions must be caught
The compiler enforces this, so code is littered with trys.
Con Limited documentation
As Pony is such a new language, documentation is relatively light, and tutorials are few and far-between.
Con Few libraries
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.
Con Limited tooling
There's no IDE. Debuggers are fairly basic. Pony is too young to have much of an ecosystem.
Con Divide by zero is allowed
And instead of some sensible result like NaN or Inf, the answer is zero! Most languages would just raise an exception (and Pony used to do this), but since the compiler enforces the rule that "all exceptions must be caught" the proliferation of trys was determined to be too burdensome on the programmer. This makes the whole design of the exception system questionable.
Con Unstable API
Pony is not ready for production. It has yet to release version 1.0, and there are frequent breaking changes.
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.
Con Limited free version
Free version is limited to 800 lines and can not create DLL's.
Con Some bugs are present on the Linux platform
Con Slightly bogged syntax
Sometimes the syntax bogs down, just a little with long procedure names and such. A truly minor issue.
Con Not RAD
Not a RAD environment.
