This page is currently a mess while a great refactoring is rippling throughout programming language related pages in the wiki.

All descriptions should be merged from here into the respective language's page. The lists should be replaced with category backlinks. The category pages need not (really) exist (only as helpers). All generic descriptions of categories and their respective backlink lists will be here on this page. --AristotlePagaltzis

If the Tao is great, then the operating system is great. If the operating system is great, then the compiler is great. If the compiler is great, then the application is great. The user is pleased and there is harmony in the world.

[...?

The Tao gave birth to machine language. Machine language gave birth to the assembler. The assembler gave birth to the compiler. Now there are ten thousand languages.

Each language has its purpose, however humble. Each language expresses the Yin and Yang of software. Each language has its place within the Tao.

But do not program in COBOL if you can avoid it.

-- Geoffrey James, The Tao of Programming

A human-readable language to control computers. SourceCode written in a ProgrammingLanguage is commonly compiled into a BinaryExecutable or ByteCode by a Compiler, but it may be interpreted?.

Machine Oriented General Purpose: C++, Java, Pascal

BASIC COBOL Fortran

Systems programming languages

These languages are designed for low-level software: drivers, OperatingSystems?, game engines, any code that has to go really fast. They tend to be simplistic languages that closely follow the VonNeumannArchitecture? CPUs are based on which allows skilled programmers to predict and control exactly how their code will be executed.

Strangely, to date they tend to be very "unsafe" languages too. In code written in C, the SystemsProgrammingLanguage? for Unix, it's easy to introduce tiny bugs that mysteriously screw everthing up from time to time -- not something you want your OperatingSystem to do.

If you want to see an alternative approach to systems programming languages examine Modula2.

Imperative programming languages

Functional programming languages

Functional programming is a paradigm based loosely on the LambdaCalculus approach to ComputerScience, in which everything in a program is a function.

In pure functional programming, there are no side effects; you cannot assign a value to a variable more than once, only return values from functions. Therefor, a function's return value depends only on the parameters passed. As a result, you can even mathematically prove the correctness of a program. You can also easily "memoize" functions, ie shortcircuiting their execution by looking up the return value of a previous call to a computationally expensive function for the same set of arguments in a cache. It also allows the computer to execute all parts of the program in arbitrary order to arrive and the desired result.

For examples of functional ProgrammingLanguage see Category:FunctionalProgrammingLanguages.

Programmers generally prefer imperative programming as they find it easier to understand and build practical applications with. Indeed, some things that depend on side effects and are easy in imperative programming are unreasonably hard to solve in pure functional programming - I/O is an example. However, problems that may seem terribly difficult in imperative programming are often trivial in pure functional programming.

It has been theorised this preference for imperative programming is a result of most people learning imperative programming languages (C++, BASIC, Java etc). If they even learn functional programming at all, it is usually much later and in much less depth, so they never really learn to think like a functional programmer. Perhaps if more programmers were taught to think in a functional style from their infancy we would see more applications written in functional languages.

Object oriented programming languages

Obfuscated programming languages

These languages are not intended to be used for serious work, but to stretch the brain. You might also be interested in PolyGlot.

Very High Level General Purpose

Python

This is a good language to learn if you only program occasionally out of necessity. (E.g. if you are a WebMonkey who needs do odd things with text, XML and structured data every now and then.) Those who like it find Python code unusually easy to read, which is good if you are returning to a script you wrote 3 months ago; and it has a very complete standard library, so you don't have to start from scratch when working on common tasks. It's use of indentation as the only means of structuring source is not appreciated by everyone, though.

Special purpose programming languages