Language Overview

A list and brief analysis of every language I can think of or find.

Not intended as a deep analysis or criticism- rather as a source of inspiration for language ideas, or a list of interesting things to look into for programming language nerds.

Feel free to suggest languages, tags, or interesting things I missed in issues!

Mainstream

C#:

Tags: JIT, CLR, OOP, Functional, Imperative, Static, Dynamic, Reflection

Interesting features:

• Reflection
• Runtime code compilation
• Attributes as metadata
• Dynamically-typed subset, primarily static
• Garbage Collector
• using keyword for delaying cleanup until end of scope

Java:

Tags: JIT, JVM, OOP, Imperative, Static, Reflection

Interesting features:

• ??? Likely a subset of C#'s interesting features. Probably not digging deeper.

Groovy:

Tags: JIT, JVM, OOP, Imperative, Static, Reflection

Interesting features:

• Effectively an improved java?

Scala:

Tags: JIT, JVM, Functional, Reflection

Interesting features:

• Needs investigation

Kotlin

Tags: JIT, JVM, Functional, Reflection

Interesting features:

• Needs investigation

Python

Tags: Interpreted, OOP, Functional, Imperative, Dynamic

Interesting features:

• Significant whitespace in place of traditional syntax separators
• Utilizing more functional programming patterns to simplify traditional code patterns
• "One way to do things" philosophy

Ruby

Tags: Dynamic, OOP, Procedural

Interesting features:

• Additive class redefinition
• Modules as composable abstract classes

Popular

Rust

Tags: Static, Functional, Imperative, Strongly typed, AOT

Interesting features:

• Token stream substitution macros
• Borrow checker
• RAII
• Tagged unions
• Inline LLVM IR
• Explicit copiability (linear types?)

Julia

Tags: JIT, Static, Dynamic, Gradual, Strongly typed, Imperative, Functional, OOP

Interesting features:

• Multiple dispatch
• First-class types

Zig

Tags: AOT, Static, Strongly typed, Imperative, Compile-time

Interesting features:

• @import macro constructs a structure representing contents of import
• Dedicated error type syntax
• 16 bit and 128 bit floats
• First-class types, but only at compile time
• Dedicated testing syntax
• Dedicated operators for overflow behavior of arithmetic
• Built-in vector types
• All structs are anonymous
• Defer to end of scope
• Extensive compile-time operations

Historical

C

Tags: Weak typing, Imperative, Procedural, Static

Interesting features:

• Inline assembly
• Text substitution macros
• Specified ABI
• Conditional compilation tools

Algol

Tags: Strong typing, Static, Imperative, Functional, Concurrent

Interesting features:

• Explicit local allocation
• Complex numbers as primitives
• Recursive type definition
• Expression-orientation
• n-Dimensional arrays and slicing
• Tagged unions
• Custom operators

Weird

Pawn

Tags: JIT, Untyped, Imperative, Procedural

Interesting features:

• Small, capable of embedding
• Aimed at non-expert programmers
• Semicolons optional, but required for multi-statement lines
• Deterministic
• State machines are a language construct
• Tags as a replacement for a type system
• Sandboxed
• Has a .net wrapper
• Integer-only. Can support floating point using native functions

Notes: This is basically like C but with the jank and everything except integers stripped out. It's almost like what I would want to teach beginners programming, but it's missing too many things and adds ones that aren't as important.

Whiley

Tags: Functional, Imperative, Contracts, JIT?, Borrow Checker?

Interesting features:

• Pythonic syntax
• Reflection? Maybe?
• Pre and post-conditions of functions
• Emphasis on safety
• Nice type system