Language Comparison Table

Language	Paradigm(s)	Standardized	Type strength	Type safety	Expression of types	Type compatibility	Type checking	Parameter Passing Methods Available	Garbage collection	Intended use	Design goals
ActionScript	imperative, object-oriented,distributed	Yes , ECMA	strong	safe			static		Yes	Web design
Ada	concurrent, distributed, generic, imperative, object-oriented	Yes , ANSI, ISO, ANSI/MIL-STD-1815A-1983, ISO/IEC 8652, ISO/IEC TR 24718, GOST 27831-88	strong	safe	explicit	nominative	static	by value, by reference (compiler chosen if not determined by the data type)	GC is allowed, but not mandated	Embedded, real-time, mission-critical, long-lived, and large scale systems	Reliability and maintenance, Programming as a human activity, Efficiency Language Reference Manual
ALGOL 68	concurrent, imperative	Yes , GOST 27974-88	soft, weak, meek, firm and strong - depending on context.	safe	explicit	structural	static or dynamic (programmer chosen)	by value or by reference (programmer chosen)	Yes	Application	Completeness and clarity of design, Orthogonal design, Security, Efficiency (Static mode checking, Mode-independent parsing, Independent compilation, Loop optimization, Representations in minimal & larger character sets)
AutoHotkey	imperative	No	untyped					by value or by reference	No	End User Programming	simplicity, speed, stability
BASIC	procedural	Yes , ANSI, ISO	varies by dialect						varies by dialect	Education	Simplicity
C	imperative	Yes , ANSI C89, ISO C90/C99	weak	unsafe	explicit	nominative	static	by value, by reference (through pointers)	Optional through external tools	System, Embedded	Low level access, Minimal constraint
C#	imperative, object-oriented, generic, reflective, functional, event-driven	Yes , ECMA, ISO	strong	safe (unsafe allowed)	implicit	nominative	static, dynamic (for interop)		Yes	Application	Rapid application development
C++	imperative, object-oriented, generic	Yes , ISO	strong	safe (unsafe allowed)	explicit, partially implicit	nominative, structural	static, dynamic	by value, by reference (through reference types)	Optional through external tools	Application, System	Abstraction, Efficiency, Compatibility
Clean	functional, generic	No	strong		implicit		static		Yes	General	Correctness, Modularity
Clojure	functional, concurrent		strong	safe			dynamic, static		Yes
COBOL	imperative, object-oriented	Yes	strong				static		No	Business and Financial Applications	Readability
ColdFusion	procedural, object-oriented	No	weak		implicit		dynamic			Web Development	Rapid Application Development, Ease of use
Common Lisp	imperative, functional, object-oriented	Yes	strong	safe			dynamic, static		Yes	General	Standardize Lisp
D	imperative, object-oriented, generic	No	strong	safe, unsafe allowed	explicit, optional inferred	nominative, structural	static, dynamic	by value, by reference (through reference types)	Yes	Application, System	Compilability, Correctness, Efficiency
E	imperative, object-oriented, object-capability, communicating event loops	No , still in development	strong (runtime)	safe	optional explicit	duck	dynamic	by value	Yes	Secure collaboration, distributed systems, running untrusted applications, high-level "scripting"	Familiarity to C/Java/JS users; less error-prone concurrency & security
eC	imperative, object-oriented, generic, reflective	No	weak	unsafe	explicit, partially implicit	nominative, complex conversions system	static, dynamic	according to data type, or explicitly by value, by reference	Reference counting	Applications, GUIs, System, Games	Elegance, Performance, Simplicity, Lightness, 99.9% C compatibility
Eiffel	imperative, object-oriented, generic	Yes , ECMA-367, ISO/IEC 25436:2006	strong	safe		nominative	static		Yes	Application	Correctness, Efficiency, Design by contract
Erlang	functional, concurrent, distributed, declarative - pattern matching, imperative	No	strong	safe	implicit		dynamic	immutable data structures, syntactically by value but safe sharing of compound data types	Yes	Telecom and distributed applications	Fault tolerance, Reliability - Nonstop Running, Hot Code Change, Safety, Concurrency, Distribution, Scalability
Factor	stack-oriented			safe	implicit	duck	dynamic	by reference	Yes
Forth	imperative, stack-oriented	Yes , ANSI	none	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a		No	Application, Embedded systems	Compact implementations, Low level access, Interactive programming
Fortran	imperative, procedural, object-oriented	Yes , ISO, ISO/IEC 1539-1:2004	strong	safe		nominative	static		No	Scientific and numeric applications	Runtime efficiency, Simple syntax
Gambas	object-oriented	No	strong	safe	explicit		dynamic	by value, by reference		Application, Scripting	Rapid application development, Visual Basic alternative
Go	concurrent		strong	safe	explicit		static		Yes
Groovy	imperative, object-oriented, aspect-oriented	No	strong	safe	implicit		dynamic		Yes	Application	JVM compatibility
Haskell	functional, generic, lazy evaluation	Yes , Haskell 98 Report	strong	safe	inferred, optional explicit annotations	polymorphic structural	static		Yes	Application, Research	lazy evaluation, Teaching and research, completely formally described Report Preface
icon	procedural, structured, goal directed, string scanning, co-expressions	No	strong	Safe	implicit	nominative	dynamic	by value and safe reference depending if the type is mutable or immutable	Yes	Text analysis, text editing, document formatting, artificial intelligence, expert systems, rapid prototyping, symbolic mathematics, text generation, and data laundry	Facilitates ease of programming, short concise programs, automatic storage allocation and management, provide a rich base of basic data types and structures, and platform independence. Also see Unicon for the unified extended dialect of Icon.
Io	object-oriented, prototype	No	strong				dynamic		Yes
J	array programming, function-level programming, tacit	No	strong	safe			dynamic	by value, by name	Yes	Data processing, expressing concepts algorithms and architectures	Terseness, Expressiveness, Powerful Data Manipulation
Java	imperative, object-oriented, generic, reflective	No	strong	safe	explicit	nominative	static	by value	Yes	Application	Write once run anywhere
JavaScript	imperative, object-oriented, functional, reflective	Yes	weak		implicit		dynamic		Yes	Client side web scripting
Joy	functional, stack-oriented	No	strong	safe			dynamic			functional research	concatenative
Lisp	functional, reflective; others vary by dialect	No	strong				dynamic		Yes	General	Simple notation for Lambda calculus, Homoiconicity
Logo	procedural, functional	No	strong	safe	implicit	structural	dynamic		Yes	Education	Simple syntax, Turtle graphics, Interactive programming
Lua	procedural, imperative, reflective	No	strong	safe	implicit		dynamic		Yes	Host-driven Scripting	Small, embedded, configuration.
Lucid	dataflow, functional	No	strong	safe			dynamic			stream processing	dataflow
Mathematica	functional, procedural	No	strong				dynamic		Yes	Numeric computation and visualization
MAXScript	imperative, object-oriented, procedural	No	strong	safe	implicit		dynamic	by value, by reference		3D Art Tools, Scripting	Simplicity, Accessibilty
Modula-3	imperative, object-oriented, procedural, generic	No	strong	safe (unsafe allowed)	explicit	structural	static	by value, by reference	Yes	Application, Systems	Simple, Object oriented
Nial	functional, array programming	No	strong				dynamic			Data processing
Oberon-2	procedural, imperative, object-oriented	No	strong	safe	explicit	structural	static	by value, by reference	Yes	Teaching, System	Simplicity
Object Pascal (Delphi)	imperative, object-oriented, generic	No	strong	safe (unsafe allowed)	explicit	nominative	static		some types	Application, System	Readability, Rapid application development, Modularity
Objective-C	imperative, object-oriented, reflective	Yes	weak		explicit		static		Yes (as of 2.0)	Application	Smalltalk like, Component based code reuse, C compatibility
Ocaml	object-oriented, functional, imperative, generic	No	strong	safe	inferred, optional explicit annotations	polymorphic structural	static	by value	Yes	Application	Efficiency, Robustness, Correctness
Oz	logic programming, functional, imperative, object-oriented, concurrent	No	strong	safe	implicit	structural	dynamic	by reference (though often immutable)	Yes	Application, Education, Distribution
Pascal	imperative, procedural	Yes (Extended Pascal standardized under ISO)	strong	safe	explicit		static	by value, by reference	No	Education	Readability, Discipline, Modularity
Perl	imperative, procedural, reflective, functional, object-oriented, generic	No	weak		implicit		dynamic, static	by value, by reference	Reference counting	Text processing, Scripting	Terseness, Expressiveness
Perl 6	imperative, procedural, reflective, functional, object-oriented, generic, lazy evaluation, multiple dispatch, metaprogramming	Yes , Perl 6 Synopses	weak	safe, unsafe	optional explicit	nominative	dynamic, static	by value, by reference	Yes	Application, text processing, scripting	Expressiveness, generality
PHP	imperative, object-oriented, reflective	No	weak				dynamic		Yes	Web Application, CLI	Robustness and Simplicity
Pop11	imperative, object-oriented, functional	No	strong	safe	implicit		dynamic		Yes	Application, Education
Prolog	logic programming	Yes , ISO	strong				dynamic		Yes	Problem solving, Artificial intelligence	declarative
Pure	dynamic, functional		strong			structural	dynamic		Yes
Python	imperative, object-oriented, functional, aspect-oriented, reflective	No	strong	safe	implicit		dynamic	Call by object reference	Yes	Application, Education, Scripting	Simplicity, Readability, Expressiveness, Modularity
RapidQ	imperative, component-oriented programming, event-driven	No	strong (none for Variant type)	safe			static	by reference, by value		Application	Rapid application development, Simplicity, BASIC compatibility
Ruby	imperative, object-oriented, aspect-oriented, reflective	No	strong		implicit		dynamic	by reference	Yes	Application, Scripting	Expressiveness, Readability
Scala	object-oriented, functional, generic	No	strong		partially implicit		static		Yes	General, Education	concise, type-safe, integrate object-oriented and functional paradigms, extensible
Scheme	functional	Yes , R5RS, R6RS	strong	safe	implicit		dynamic (latent)	by value	Yes	General, Education	Minimalistic, Lexical Scoping
Slate	object-oriented, imperative, functional, reflective, prototype, multi-dispatch	No	strong	safe	implicit, optional	structural (aka duck)	dynamic	by reference	Yes	Application, Embedded, Scripting	Uniformity, Pure object-oriented, expressiveness, readability
Smalltalk	object-oriented, concurrent, event-driven, imperative, declarative	Yes , ANSI	strong	safe	implicit		dynamic	by reference	Yes	Application, Education	Uniformity, Pure object oriented
Tcl	imperative, procedural, event-driven, object-oriented (native from Tcl 8.6 or via extensions before that)	No	weak	safe	implicit	duck	dynamic	by value (also by name and by reference through passing of variable names and upvar command)	Only of unnamed entities, e.g., values	Embedded, Application, Scripting	Extend, Embed and Integrate
Unicon	procedural, structured, goal directed, string scanning, co-expressions, object-oriented	No	strong	Safe	implicit	nominative	dynamic	by value and safe reference depending if the type is mutable or immutable	Yes	Text analysis, text editing, document formatting, artificial intelligence, expert systems, rapid prototyping, symbolic mathematics, text generation, and data laundry.	Facilitates ease of programming, short concise programs, automatic storage allocation and management, provide a rich base of basic data types and structures, and platform independence . Unicon provides additional capabilities over Icon integrating object oriented capabilities, messaging and external communications, event monitoring, and more in a consistent framework.
V	functional, stack-oriented, concatenative	No	strong	safe			dynamic			functional research	concatenative
Visual Basic	component-oriented programming, event-driven	No	strong	safe		nominative	static	by reference, by value (explicit)	Yes	Application	Rapid application development, Simplicity
Visual Basic .NET	object-oriented, event-driven	No	strong				static, dynamic (for interop)	by reference, by value (both explicit)	Yes	Application	Rapid application development, Simplicity
Windows PowerShell	imperative, object-oriented, functional, pipeline, reflective	No	strong	safe	implicit		dynamic			Scripting
Language	Paradigm(s)	Standardized	Type strength	Type safety	Expression of types	Type compatibility	Type checking	Parameter Passing Methods Available	Garbage collection	Intended use	Design goals

External resources

• Wikipedia: Comparison of programming languages