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Wikipedia / List of programming languages by type

The notable programming languages listed here are grouped by their notable language attribute. As a language can have multiple attributes, the same language can appear in multiple groupings.

Agent-oriented programming languages

Agent-oriented programming allows the developer to build, extend and use software agents, which are abstractions of objects that can message other agents.

Array languages

Array programming (also termed vector or multidimensional) languages generalize operations on scalars to apply transparently to vectorss, matrices, and higher-dimensional arrays.

Aspect-oriented programming languages

Aspect-oriented programming enables developers to add new functions to code, known as advice, without modifying that code. Instead, it uses a pointcut to implement the advice into code blocks.

Assembly languages

Assembly languages directly correspond to a machine language (see below), so machine code instructions appear in a form understandable by humans, although there may not be a one-to-one mapping between an individual statement and an individual instruction. Assembly languages let programmers use symbolic addresses, which the assembler converts to absolute or relocatable addresses. Most assemblers also support macros and symbolic constantss.

Authoring languages

An authoring language is a programming language designed for use by a non-computer expert to easily create tutorials, websites, and other interactive computer programs.

Command-line interface languages

Command-line interface (CLI) languages are also called batch languages or job control languages. Examples:

  • 4DOS (shell for IBM PCs)

  • 4OS2 (shell for IBM PCs)

Batch files for DOS and Windows

sh

csh

Compiled languages

These are languages typically processed by compilers, though theoretically any language can be compiled or interpreted.

ALGOL 58

ALGOL 60

Eiffel

ML

Standard ML (SML)

Concatenative programming languages

A concatenative programming language is a point-free computer programming language in which all expressions denote functions, and the juxtaposition of expressions denotes function composition.

Concurrent languages

Message passing languages provide language constructs for concurrency. The predominant paradigm for concurrency in mainstream languages such as Java is shared memory concurrency. Concurrent languages that make use of message passing have generally been inspired by process calculi such as communicating sequential processes (CSP) or the π-calculus.

Java

occam

Constraint programming languages

A constraint programming language is a declarative programming language where relationships between variables are expressed as constraints. Execution proceeds by attempting to find values for the variables which satisfy all declared constraints.

Contract languages

Design by contract (or contract programming) is programming using defined preconditions, postconditions, and invariantss.

Curly bracket languagescurly-brace

A curly bracket or curly brace language has syntax that defines a block as the statements between curly brackets, a.k.a. braces, {}. This syntax originated with BCPL (1966), and was popularized by C. Many curly bracket languages descend from or are strongly influenced by C. Examples:

ECMAScript

Java

Dataflow languages

Dataflow programming languages rely on a (usually visual) representation of the flow of data to specify the program. Often used to react to discrete events or to process streams of data. Dataflow languages include:

Data-oriented languages

Data-oriented languages provide powerful ways to search and manipulate the relations that have been described as entity relationship tables, which map one set of things into other sets. Data-oriented languages include:

Decision table languages

Decision tables can be used as an aid to clarifying the logic before writing a program in any language, but in the 1960s a number of languages were developed where the main logic is expressed directly in the form of a decision table, including:

Declarative languages

Declarative languages express the logic of a computation without describing its control flow in detail. Declarative programming stands in contrast to imperative programming via imperative programming languages, where control flow is specified by serial orders (imperatives). (Pure) functional and logic-based programming languages are also declarative, and constitute the major subcategories of the declarative category. This section lists additional examples not in those subcategories.

Embeddable languages

In source code

Source embeddable languages embed small pieces of executable code inside a piece of free-form text, often a web page.

Client-side embedded languages are limited by the abilities of the browser or intended client. They aim to provide dynamism to web pages without the need to recontact the server.

Server-side embedded languages are much more flexible, since almost any language can be built into a server. The aim of having fragments of server-side code embedded in a web page is to generate additional markup dynamically; the code itself disappears when the page is served, to be replaced by its output.

Server side

The above examples are particularly dedicated to this purpose. A large number of other languages, such as Erlang, Scala, Perl and Ruby can be adapted (for instance, by being made into Apache modules).

Client side

In object code

A wide variety of dynamic or scripting languages can be embedded in compiled executable code. Basically, object code for the language's interpreter needs to be linked into the executable. Source code fragments for the embedded language can then be passed to an evaluation function as strings. Application control languages can be implemented this way, if the source code is input by the user. Languages with small interpreters are preferred.

Educational programming languages

Languages developed primarily for the purpose of teaching and learning of programming.

Esoteric languages

An esoteric programming language is a programming language designed as a test of the boundaries of computer programming language design, as a proof of concept, or as a joke.

Extension languages

Extension programming languages are languages embedded into another program and used to harness its features in extension scripts.

Fourth-generation languages

Fourth-generation programming languages are high-level programming languages built around database systems. They are generally used in commercial environments.

Functional languages

Functional programming languages define programs and subroutines as mathematical functions and treat them as first-class. Many so-called functional languages are "impure", containing imperative features. Many functional languages are tied to mathematical calculation tools. Functional languages include:

Pure

Impure

APL

ECMAScript

Erlang

Lisp

Scheme

ML

Standard ML (SML)

Perl

Hardware description languages

In electronics, a hardware description language (HDL) is a specialized computer language used to describe the structure, design, and operation of electronic circuits, and most commonly, digital logic circuits. The two most widely used and well-supported HDL varieties used in industry are Verilog and VHDL. Hardware description languages include:

HDLs for analog circuit design

  • Verilog-AMS (Verilog for Analog and Mixed-Signal)

  • VHDL-AMS (VHDL with Analog/Mixed-Signal extension)

HDLs for digital circuit design

Imperative languages

Imperative programming languages may be multi-paradigm and appear in other classifications. Here is a list of programming languages that follow the imperative paradigm:

ALGOL 58

ECMAScript

Interactive mode languages

Known as REPL - Interactive mode languages act as a kind of shell: expressions or statements can be entered one at a time, and the result of their evaluation seen immediately.

ECMAScript

Interpreted languages

Interpreted languages are programming languages in which programs may be executed from source code form, by an interpreter. Theoretically, any language can be compiled or interpreted, so the term interpreted language generally refers to languages that are usually interpreted rather than compiled.

Iterative languages

Iterative languages are built around or offering generatorss.

Languages by memory management type

Garbage collected languages

Garbage Collection (GC) is a form of automatic memory management. The garbage collector attempts to reclaim memory that was allocated by the program but is no longer used.

ECMAScript

Lisp (originator)

ML

Standard ML (SML)

Languages with manual memory management

Languages with optional manual memory management

Some programming languages without the inherent ability to manually manage memory, like Cython, Swift, and Scala (Scala Native only), are able to import or call functions like malloc and free from C through a foreign function interface.

The Java programming language used to offer some degree of manual memory allocation through the internal sun.misc.Unsafe class. However, this class is now deprecated and will eventually be removed.

Languages with deterministic memory management

Languages with automatic reference counting (ARC)

List-based languages – LISPs

List-based languages are a type of data-structured language that are based on the list data structure.

Lisp

Tcl

Little languages

Little languages serve a specialized problem domain.

  • awk – used for text file manipulation.

    sed – parses and transforms text

  • SQL – has only a few keywords and not all the constructs needed for a full programming language – many database management systems extend SQL with additional constructs as a stored procedure language

  • XPL - a language designed for, although not limited to, compiler writing

Logic-based languages

Logic-based languages specify a set of attributes that a solution must-have, rather than a set of steps to obtain a solution.

Notable languages following this programming paradigm include:

Prolog (formulates data and the program evaluation mechanism as a special form of mathematical logic called Horn logic and a general proving mechanism called logical resolution)

Machine languages

Machine languagess are directly executable by a computer's CPU. They are typically formulated as bit patterns, usually represented in octal or hexadecimal. Each bit pattern causes the circuits in the CPU to execute one of the fundamental operations of the hardware. The activation of specific electrical inputs (e.g., CPU package pins for microprocessors), and logical settings for CPU state values, control the processor's computation. Individual machine languages are specific to a family of processors; machine-language code for one family of processors cannot run directly on processors in another family unless the processors in question have additional hardware to support it (for example, DEC VAX processors included a PDP-11 compatibility mode). They are (essentially) always defined by the CPU developer, not by 3rd parties. The symbolic version, the processor's assembly language, is also defined by the developer, in most cases. Some commonly used machine code instruction sets are:

ARM

  • Original 32-bit

  • 16-bit Thumb instructions (subset of registers used)

  • 64-bit (major architecture change)

Burroughs Corporation

DEC:

Hewlett-Packard

IBM

Intel 8008, 8080 and 8085

Intel x86:

16-bit x86, first used in the Intel 8086

x86-64 – The original specification was created by AMD. There are vendor variants, but they're essentially the same:

MOS Technology 65xx (8-bit)

POWER, first used in the IBM RS/6000

UNIVAC

  • 30-bit computers: 490, 492, 494, 1230

36-bit computers

Macro languages

Textual substitution macro languages

Macro languages transform one source code file into another. A "macro" is essentially a short piece of text that expands into a longer one (not to be confused with hygienic macros), possibly with parameter substitution. They are often used to preprocess source code. Preprocessors can also supply facilities like file inclusion.

Macro languages may be restricted to acting on specially labeled code regions (pre-fixed with a # in the case of the C preprocessor). Alternatively, they may not, but in this case it is still often undesirable to (for instance) expand a macro embedded in a string literal, so they still need a rudimentary awareness of syntax. That being the case, they are often still applicable to more than one language. Contrast with source-embeddable languages like PHP, which are fully featured.

  • C preprocessor

  • m4 (originally from AT&T, bundled with Unix)

  • ML/I (general-purpose macro processor)

  • TTM (developed at the California Institute of Technology)

Application macro languages

Scripting languages such as Tcl and ECMAScript (ActionScript, ECMAScript for XML, JavaScript, JScript) have been embedded into applications. These are sometimes called "macro languages", although in a somewhat different sense to textual-substitution macros like m4.

Metaprogramming languages

Metaprogramming is the writing of programs that write or manipulate other programs, including themselves, as their data or that do part of the work that is otherwise done at run time during compile time. In many cases, this allows programmers to get more done in the same amount of time as they would take to write all the code manually.

Modular languages

Modular programming is a programming paradigm of organising functions and symbols into independent modules.

Pascal derivatives

Multiparadigm languages

Multiparadigm languagess support more than one programming paradigm. They allow a program to use more than one programming style. The goal is to allow programmers to use the best tool for a job, admitting that no one paradigm solves all problems in the easiest or most efficient way.

  • 1C:Enterprise programming language (generic, imperative, object-oriented, prototype-based, functional)

  • Ada (concurrent, distributed, generic (template metaprogramming), imperative, object-oriented (class-based))

  • ALF (functional, logic)

  • Alma-0 (constraint, imperative, logic)

  • APL (functional, imperative, object-oriented (class-based))

  • BETA (functional, imperative, object-oriented (class-based))

  • C++ (generic, imperative, object-oriented (class-based), functional, metaprogramming)

  • C# (generic, imperative, object-oriented (class-based), functional, declarative)

  • Ceylon (generic, imperative, object-oriented (class-based), functional, declarative)

  • ChucK (imperative, object-oriented, time-based, concurrent, on-the-fly)

  • Cobra (generic, imperative, object-oriented (class-based), functional, contractual)

  • Common Lisp (functional, imperative, object-oriented (class-based), aspect-oriented (user may add further paradigms, e.g., logic))

  • Curl (functional, imperative, object-oriented (class-based), metaprogramming)

  • Curry (concurrent, functional, logic)

  • D (generic, imperative, functional, object-oriented (class-based), metaprogramming)

  • Dart (generic, imperative, functional, object-oriented (class-based))

  • Delphi Object Pascal (generic, imperative, object-oriented (class-based), metaprogramming)

  • Dylan (functional, object-oriented (class-based))

ECMAScript (functional, imperative, object-oriented (prototype-based))

  • ActionScript

  • ECMAScript for XML

  • JavaScript

  • JScript

  • Eiffel (imperative, object-oriented (class-based), generic, functional (agents), concurrent (SCOOP))

  • F# (functional, generic, object-oriented (class-based), language-oriented)

  • Fantom (functional, object-oriented (class-based))

  • Go (imperative, procedural),

  • Groovy (functional, object-oriented (class-based), imperative, procedural)

  • Harbour

  • Hop

  • J (functional, imperative, object-oriented (class-based))

  • Java (generic, imperative, object-oriented (class-based), functional)

  • Julia (imperative, multiple dispatch ("object-oriented"), functional, metaprogramming)

  • LabVIEW (visual, dataflow, concurrent, modular, functional, object-oriented, scripting)

  • Lua (functional, imperative, object-oriented (prototype-based))

  • Mercury (functional, logical, object-oriented)

  • Metaobject protocols (object-oriented (class-based, prototype-based))

  • Nemerle (functional, object-oriented (class-based), imperative, metaprogramming)

  • Objective-C (imperative, object-oriented (class-based), reflective)

  • OCaml (functional, imperative, object-oriented (class-based), modular)

  • Oz (functional (evaluation: eager, lazy), logic, constraint, imperative, object-oriented (class-based), concurrent, distributed), and Mozart Programming System cross-platform Oz

  • Object Pascal (imperative, object-oriented (class-based))

  • Perl (imperative, functional (can't be purely functional), object-oriented, class-oriented, aspect-oriented (through modules))

  • PHP (imperative, object-oriented, functional (can't be purely functional))

  • Pike (interpreted, general-purpose, high-level, cross-platform, dynamic programming language )

  • Prograph (dataflow, object-oriented (class-based), visual)

  • Python (functional, compiled, interpreted, object-oriented (class-based), imperative, metaprogramming, extension, impure, interactive mode, iterative, reflective, scripting)

  • R (array, interpreted, impure, interactive mode, list-based, object-oriented prototype-based, scripting)

  • Racket (functional, imperative, object-oriented (class-based) and can be extended by the user)

  • Raku (concurrent, concatenative, functional, metaprogramming generic, imperative, reflection object-oriented, pipelines, reactive, and via libraries constraints, distributed)

  • Rebol (functional, imperative, object-oriented (prototype-based), metaprogramming (dialected))

  • Red (functional, imperative, object-oriented (prototype-based), metaprogramming (dialected))

  • Ruby (imperative, functional, object-oriented (class-based), metaprogramming)

  • Rust (concurrent, functional, imperative, object-oriented, generic, metaprogramming, compiled)

  • Scala (functional, object-oriented)

  • Seed7 (imperative, object-oriented, generic)

  • SISAL (concurrent, dataflow, functional)

  • Spreadsheets (functional, visual)

  • Swift (protocol-oriented, object-oriented, functional, imperative, block-structured)

Tcl (functional, imperative, object-oriented (class-based))

Numerical analysis

Several general-purpose programming languages, such as C and Python, are also used for technical computing, this list focuses on languages almost exclusively used for technical computing.

Non-English-based languages

Object-oriented class-based languages

Class-based object-oriented programming languages support objects defined by their class. Class definitions include member data. Message passing is a key concept, if not the main concept, in object-oriented languages.

Polymorphic functions parameterized by the class of some of their arguments are typically called methods. In languages with single dispatch, classes typically also include method definitions. In languages with multiple dispatch, methods are defined by generic functions. There are exceptions where single dispatch methods are generic functions (e.g. Bigloo's object system).

Multiple dispatchMultiple dispatch

Single dispatch

Eiffel

Java

Modula-2 (data abstraction, information hiding, strong typing, full modularity)

Smalltalk (pure object-orientation, developed at Xerox PARC)

Squeak

Object-oriented prototype-based languages

Prototype-based languages are object-oriented languages where the distinction between classes and instances has been removed:

ECMAScript

Off-side rule languages

Off-side rule languages denote blocks of code by their indentation.

  • ISWIM, the abstract language that introduced the rule

ABC, Python's parent

Python

Miranda, Haskell's parent

Haskell

Procedural languages

Procedural programming languages are based on the concept of the unit and scope (the data viewing range) of an executable code statement. A procedural program is composed of one or more units or modules, either user coded or provided in a code library; each module is composed of one or more procedures, also called a function, routine, subroutine, or method, depending on the language. Examples of procedural languages include:

  • Ada (multi-purpose language)

ALGOL 58

ALGOL 60 (very influential language design)

ECMAScript

Fortran (better modularity in later Standards)

Java

Oberon, Oberon-2 (improved, smaller, faster, safer follow-ons for Modula-2)

Pascal (successor to ALGOL 60, predecessor of Modula-2)

Query languages

Reflective languages

Reflective programming languages let programs examine and possibly modify their high-level structure at runtime or compile-time. This is most common in high-level virtual machine programming languages like Smalltalk, and less common in lower-level programming languages like C. Languages and platforms supporting reflection:

CLI

ECMAScript

JVM

Lisp

Poplog

Smalltalk (pure object-orientation, originally from Xerox PARC)

Rule-based languages

Rule-based languages instantiate rules when activated by conditions in a set of data. Of all possible activations, some set is selected and the statements belonging to those rules execute. Rule-based languages include:

Scripting languages

CLI

ECMAScript

JVM

Rexx

Many shell command languages have powerful scripting abilities:

sh and compatibles

Stack-based languages

Stack-based languages are a type of data-structured language that are based on the stack data structure.

Synchronous languages

Synchronous programming languages are optimized for programming reactive systems, systems that are often interrupted and must respond quickly. Many such systems are also called realtime systems, and are used often in embedded systems.

Examples:

Shading languages

A shading language is a graphics programming language adapted to programming shader effects. Such language forms usually consist of special data types, like "color" and "normal". Due to the variety of target markets for 3D computer graphics.

Real-time rendering

They provide both higher hardware abstraction and a more flexible programming model than previous paradigms which hardcoded transformation and shading equations. This gives the programmer greater control over the rendering process and delivers richer content at lower overhead.

Offline rendering

Shading languages used in offline rendering produce maximum image quality. Processing such shaders is time-consuming. The computational power required can be expensive because of their ability to produce photorealistic results.

Syntax-handling languages

These languages assist with generating lexical analyzers and parsers for context-free grammars.

System languages

A system programming language is for low-level tasks like memory management or task management; it usually refers to a language used for systems programming; such languages are designed for writing system software, which usually requires different development approaches relative to application software.

System software is computer software designed to operate and control computer hardware, and provide a platform to run application software. System software includes software categories such as operating systems, utility software, device drivers, compilers, and linkers. Examples of system languages include:

Transformation languages

Transformation languages serve the purpose of transforming (translating) source code specified in a certain formal language into a defined destination format code. It is most commonly used in intermediate components of more complex super-systems in order to adopt internal results for input into a succeeding processing routine.

Visual languages

Visual programming languages let users specify programs in a two-(or more)-dimensional way, instead of as one-dimensional text strings, via graphic layouts of various types. Some dataflow programming languages are also visual languages.

Wirth languages

Computer scientist Niklaus Wirth designed and implemented several influential languages.

Modula

Modula-2, Modula-3, variants

Oberon (Oberon, Oberon-07, Oberon-2)

Pascal

XML-based languages

These are languages based on or that operate on XML.

See also

Notes

References