A Comparison Programming Languages
Today's computer programmer has many languages to choose from, but what's the difference between them? What are these languages used for? How can we categorize them in useful ways?
These days, programming languages are becoming more and more general and all-purpose, but they still have their specializations, and each language has its disadvantages and advantages.
Languages can generally be divided into a few basic types, though many languages support more than one programming style. This following list isn't all inclusive or as fine-grained as possible, but it brings out some of the basic design decisions behind languages.
Language Types
• Procedural
The programming style you're probably used to, procedural languages execute a sequence of statements that lead to a result. In essence, a procedural language expresses the procedure to be followed to solve a problem. Procedural languages typically use many variables and have heavy use of loops and other elements of "state", which distinguishes them from functional programming languages. Functions in procedural languages may modify variables or have other side effects (e.g., printing out information) other than the value that the function returns.
• Functional
Employing a programming style often contrasted with procedural programming, functional programs typically make little use of stored state, often eschewing loops in favor of recursive functions. The primary focus of functional programming is on the return values of functions, and side effects and other means storing state are strongly discouraged. For instance, in a pure functional language, if a function is called, it is expected that the function not modify any global variables or perform any output. It may, however, make recursive calls and change the parameters of those calls. Functional languages are often simpler syntactically and make it easier to work on abstract problems, but they can also be "further from the machine" in that their
These days, programming languages are becoming more and more general and all-purpose, but they still have their specializations, and each language has its disadvantages and advantages.
Languages can generally be divided into a few basic types, though many languages support more than one programming style. This following list isn't all inclusive or as fine-grained as possible, but it brings out some of the basic design decisions behind languages.
Language Types
• Procedural
The programming style you're probably used to, procedural languages execute a sequence of statements that lead to a result. In essence, a procedural language expresses the procedure to be followed to solve a problem. Procedural languages typically use many variables and have heavy use of loops and other elements of "state", which distinguishes them from functional programming languages. Functions in procedural languages may modify variables or have other side effects (e.g., printing out information) other than the value that the function returns.
• Functional
Employing a programming style often contrasted with procedural programming, functional programs typically make little use of stored state, often eschewing loops in favor of recursive functions. The primary focus of functional programming is on the return values of functions, and side effects and other means storing state are strongly discouraged. For instance, in a pure functional language, if a function is called, it is expected that the function not modify any global variables or perform any output. It may, however, make recursive calls and change the parameters of those calls. Functional languages are often simpler syntactically and make it easier to work on abstract problems, but they can also be "further from the machine" in that their