List of programming languages by type

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This is a list of programming languages grouped by category.

Other lists of programming languages are:

  1. Alphabetical
  2. Categorical
  3. Chronological
  4. Generational


Array languages

Array programming languages (also known as vector or multidimensional languages) generalize operations on scalars to apply transparently to vectors, matrices, and higher dimensional arrays.

Aspect-oriented languages

Assembly languages

Assembly languages directly correspond to a machine language (see below) in order to allow machine code instructions to be written in a form understandable by humans. Assembly languages allow programmers to use symbolic addresses which are later converted to absolute addresses by the assembler. Most assemblers also allow for macros and symbolic constants.

Authoring languages

Command line interface languages

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

Compiled languages

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

Concatenative languages

Concatenative languages express programs as the concatenation of smaller programs.

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 based on monitors. Concurrent languages that make use of message-passing have generally been inspired by CSP or the π-calculus, but have had little commercial success, except for Ada and Erlang. Ada is a multipurpose language and concurrent programming is only one option available.

Curly-bracket languages

The programming languages in the curly bracket family have a syntax that defines statement blocks using the "curly bracket" or "brace" characters { and }. All these languages descend from or are strongly influenced by C. Examples of curly-bracket languages include:

Dataflow languages

Dataflow languages rely on a (usually visual) representation of the flow of data to specify the program. Frequently used for reacting to discrete events or for processing streams of data. Examples of dataflow languages include:

Data-oriented languages

Data-oriented languages provide powerful ways of searching and manipulating the relations that have been described as entity relationship tables which map one set of things into other sets. Examples of data-oriented languages include:

Data-structured languages

Data-structured languages are those where logic is structured in ways similar to their data. Such languages are generally well suited to reflection and introspection. Examples:

Declarative languages

Declarative languages describe a problem rather than defining a solution. Declarative programming stands in contrast to Imperative programming via imperative programming languages, where serial orders (imperatives) are given to a computer. In addition to the examples given just below, all (pure) Functional and Logic-based programming languages are also declarative. In fact, "functional" and "logical" constitute the usual subcategories of the declarative category.

Extension languages

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

Fourth-generation languages

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

Functional languages

Functional programming languages define programs and subroutines as mathematical functions. Many so-called functional languages are "impure", containing imperative features. Not surprisingly, many of these languages are tied to mathematical calculation tools. Functional languages include:

Interpreted languages

Interpreted languages are programming languages which programs may be executed from source code form, by an interpreter.

Iterative languages

Languages built around or offering generators

Little languages

Little languages serve a specialized problem domain.

  • awk can serve as a prototyping language for C, because the syntax is similar
  • SQL has only a few keywords, and not all the constructs needed for a full programming language

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. Examples:

Machine languages

Machine languages are directly executable by a computer's CPU. They are typically formulated as bit patterns, usually represented in octal or hexadecimal. Each group of npatterns (often 1 or more bytes) causes the circuits in the CPU to execute one of the fundamental operations of the hardware. The activation of specific electrical inputs (eg, CPU package pins for microprocessors), and logical settings for CPU state values, control the processor's computation. Individual machine languages are processor specific and are not portable. 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. Since processors come in families which are based on a shared architecture, the same basic assembly language style can often be used for more than one CPU. Each of the following CPUs served as the basis for a family of processors:

Macro languages

Macro languages embed small pieces of executable code inside a piece of free-form text.

Multiparadigm languages

Multiparadigm languages 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.

  • Ada (concurrent, distributed, generic (template metaprogramming), imperative, object-oriented (class-based))
  • ALF (functional, logic)
  • APL (functional, imperative)
  • BETA (functional, imperative, object-oriented (class-based))
  • C++ (generic, imperative, object-oriented (class-based))
  • ChucK (imperative, object-oriented, time-based, concurrent, on-the-fly)
  • Common Lisp (functional, imperative, object-oriented (class-based), aspect-oriented, (user may add further paradigms, e.g., logic))
  • Corn (concurrent, generic, imperative, object-oriented (class-based))
  • Curry (concurrent, functional, logic)
  • D (generic, imperative, object-oriented (class-based))
  • Dylan (functional, object-oriented (class-based))
  • J (functional, imperative, object-oriented (class-based))
  • JavaScript (functional, imperative, object-oriented (prototype-based))
  • LabVIEW (dataflow, visual)
  • Leda (functional, imperative, logic, object-oriented (class-based))
  • Lua (functional, imperative, object-oriented (prototype-based))
  • Objective Caml (functional, object-oriented (class-based))
  • Oz (functional (evaluation: eager, lazy), logic, constraint, imperative, object-oriented (class-based), concurrent, distributed)
  • 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)
  • Pliant (functional, imperative, object-oriented (class-based))
  • Prograph (dataflow, object-oriented (class-based), visual)
  • Python (functional, object-oriented (class-based))
  • REBOL (functional, object-oriented (prototype-based))
  • ROOP (imperative, logic, object-oriented (class-based), rule-based)
  • Ruby (functional, object-oriented (class-based))
  • SISAL (concurrent, dataflow, functional)
  • Spreadsheets (functional, visual)
  • Tcl (functional, imperative, object-oriented (class-based))

Numerical analysis

Non-English-based languages

Non-English-based programming languages:

Object-oriented class-based languages

Object-oriented programming languages support 'data & method' objects. The data structures are defined in object classes, which also include executable code (methods). Thus the effects of a change to the code remain localized. Object classes can be extended by inheritance in most of these languages. Examples:

Object-oriented prototype-based languages

Object-oriented languages where the distinction between classes and instances have been removed:

Off-side rule languages

Off-side rule languages are those where blocks are formed, indicated, by their indentation.

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:

Reflective languages

Reflective languages let programs examine and possibly modify their high level structure at runtime. 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:

Rule-based languages

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

Scripting languages

"Scripting language" has two apparently different, but in fact similar meanings.

In a traditional sense, scripting languages are designed to automate frequently used tasks that usually involve calling or passing commands to external programs.
Many complex application programs allow users to implement custom functions by providing them with built-in languages. Those which are of interpretive type, are often called scripting languages.
More recently many of these applications have chosen to "build in" traditional scripting languages, such as Perl or Visual Basic, but there are quite a few "native" scripting languages still in use.
Many scripting languages are compiled to bytecode and then this (usually) platform independent bytecode is run through a virtual machine (compare to Java).

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 found often in embedded uses. Examples:

Syntax handling languages

  • GNU bison (FSF's version of Yacc)
  • GNU Flex (FSF's version of Lex)
  • Lex (Lexical analysis, from Bell Labs)
  • M4
  • yacc (yet another compiler compiler, from Bell Labs)
  • javacc

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.

Wirth languages

Computer scientist Niklaus Wirth designed and implemented several influential languages.

XML-based languages

These are languages based on or that operate on XML. Although the big-boy equivalents of Oracle/PostgreSQL/MSSQL don't yet exist for XML, there are languages to navigate through it and its more tree-oriented structure.

See also

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