Introduction

This is a semi-exhaustive list of programming languages. Major languages or languages which I have an interest in (generally b/c they are unique in some way) are listed first in their own sections towards the beginning, later there are several sub-lists and a huge list of other smaller languages. My endeavor has been to survey the programming field that is worth surveying and to, going forward, keep tabs on the field generally speaking.

If anyone is interested in assisting with this page, I would welcome the assistance, especially when it comes to updating scores from various rankings, speaking of which:

The results listed are from the TIOBE Index for April 2015, Redmonk’s Programming Language Rankings: January 2015, Codeeval’s Most Popular Coding Languages of 2015, StackOverflow’s 2015 Developer Survey, and Pierre Carbonnelle’s PYPL PopularitY of Programming Language (May 2015)

Ada

• A#.NET – A .NET port which ended around 2006 and was replaced by AdaCore’s GNAT for .NET, but this product appears depreciated on the AdaCore website. – Wikipedia.

C

• C – Wikipedia.
• Recommended By:
  • Mashable (2014, 2015).
• TIOBE: 2
• Redmonk: 9
• Codeeval: 7
• Stackoverflow: 8
• PYPL: 6

C++

• C++ – Wikipedia.
• Recommended By:
  • Mashable (2014, 2015).
• TIOBE: 3.
• Redmonk: 5.
• Codeeval: 3.
• Stackoverflow: 7.
• PYPL: 5.

C#

• C# – Wikipedia.
• Recommended By:
  • Mashable (2014).
  • Dice (2014).
• TIOBE: 5
• Redmonk: 5
• Codeeval: 4
• Stackoverflow: 4
• PYPL: 4

Go

• Wikipedia.
• Recommended By:
  • InfoWorld (2014).
  • CIO (2014).
• TIOBE: 42
• Redmonk: 17
• Codeeval: 9
• Stackoverflow: –
• PYPL: –

Haskell

• Wikipedia.
• Recommended By:
  • InfoWorld (2014).
• TIOBE: 71
• Redmonk: 15
• Codeeval: 11
• Stackoverflow: –
• PYPL: –

Java

• Wikipedia.
• Recommended By:
  • Mashable (2014, 2015).
  • Dice (2014).
• TIOBE: 1
• Redmonk: 2
• Codeeval: 2
• Stackoverflow: 3
• PYPL: 1

JavaScript

• Wikipedia.
• Recommended By:
  • Mashable (2014, 2015).
  • Dice (2014).
• TIOBE: 6
• Redmonk: 1
• Codeeval: 6
• Stackoverflow: 1
• PYPL: 7

Julia

• Official.
• Wikipedia.
• Recommended By:
  • InfoWorld (2014).

Lisp

• Wikipedia.
• Most Popular Dialects of Lisp: Scheme, Common Lisp.
  • Scheme Wikipedia.

Lua

• TIOBE: 37
• Redmonk: –
• Codeeval: 15
• Stackoverflow: –
• PYPL: 16

Objective-C

• Recommended By:
  • Mashable (2014, 2015).
• TIOBE: 4
• Redmonk: 10
• Codeeval: 13
• Stackoverflow: 9
• PYPL: 8

Perl

• Wikipedia.
• Recommended By:
  • Mashable (2015).
• TIOBE: 12
• Redmonk: 11
• Codeeval: 10
• Stackoverflow: 0
• PYPL: 15

PHP

• Wikipedia.
• Recommended By:
  • Mashable (2014, 2015).
  • Dice (2014).
• TIOBE: 7
• Redmonk: 3
• Codeeval: 8
• Stackoverflow: 5
• PYPL: 2

Python

• Wikipedia.
• Recommended By:
  • Mashable (2014, 2015).
• TIOBE: 8
• Redmonk: 4
• Codeeval: 1
• Stackoverflow: 6
• PYPL: 3

Ruby

• Wikipedia.
• Recommended By:
  • Mashable (2014, 2015).
• TIOBE: 18
• Redmonk: 5
• Codeeval: 5
• Stackoverflow: 8
• PYPL: 12

Rust

• Wikipedia.

Scala

• Wikipedia.
• Recommended By:
  • InfoWorld (2014).
  • CIO (2014).
• TIOBE: 25
• Redmonk: 14
• Codeeval: 12
• Stackoverflow: –
• PYPL: –

Scheme

SQL

• Transact-SQL (T-SQL) – Microsoft and Sybase – Wikipedia.
  • TIOBE: 13
  • Redmonk: –
  • Codeeval: –
  • Stackoverflow: 2
  • PYPL: –
• Recommended By:
  • Mashable (2014, 2015).

Swift

• Wikipedia.
• Recommended By:
  • Mashable (2015).
  • Dice (2014).
• TIOBE: 24
• Redmonk: 22
• Codeeval: –
• Stackoverflow: –
• PYPL: 11

TypeScript

• Official Site.
• License: Free/Open Source.
• Originated By: Microsoft.
• Notable Contributors:
  • Anders Hejlsberg – C#, Delphi, Turbo Pascal.
• Superset of and transcompiles to JavaScript.
• Wikipedia.

Visual Basic .NET

• Recommended By:
  • Mashable (2015).
• TIOBE: 10
• Redmonk: 17
• Codeeval: 19
• Stackoverflow: –
• PYPL: 13

Hack

• Hack – Made by Facebook – Wikipedia.

The Rest

• APL
  • A
    • A+ – Wikipedia.
• A++ – Not related to A or A+, an educational language. – Wikipedia.
• ABAP – From SAP for use in its products. – Wikipedia.
• ABC – General purpose programming language, an educational/prototyping tool, influenced Python. – Wikipedia.
• Agda – Wikipedia.
• Algol 60
  • ABC Algol – Wikipedia.
• AppleScript – Wikipedia.
• ATS – Wikipedia.
• Awk – Wikipedia.
• BASIC – Wikipedia.
• Boo – Wikipedia.
• C – Wikipedia.
  • C– – Wikipedia.
  • Ch – Wikipedia.
  • Cyclone – From AT&T Labs, meant to be safer than C, no updates since 2006. – Wikipedia.
• C/AL – Used within Microsoft Dynamics NAV. – Wikipedia.
• Chapel – Written by Cray for parallel processing. – Wikipedia.
• Charm – For embedded devices, the Raspberry Pi. – Wikipedia.
• Cilk (MIT)
  • Cilk++
    • Cilk Plus (Intel).
• Clarion (SoftVelocity) – Wikipedia.
• Clean – Shares significant similarities with Haskell. – Wikipedia.
• COBOL – Wikipedia.
• Cobra – Wikipedia.
• Cola – Wikipedia.
• ColdFusion Markup Language (CFML) – Wikipedia.
• Common Intermediate Language (CIL) – By Microsoft, formerly MSIL. – Wikipedia.
• Converge – Wikipedia.
• Coq – Wikipedia.
• Crystal.
• Curl (originally from MIT) – Wikipedia.
• Curry – Wikipedia.
• D – Originated as rewrite of C. – Wikipedia.
• dBase – Wikipedia.
• DIBOL – Wikipedia.
• Dylan – Wikipedia.
• E – Wikipedia.
• ECMAScript – Wikipedia.
  • JavaScript
    • CoffeeScript – Wikipedia.
      • Recommended By: InfoWorld (2014).
    • Dart (Google) – Wikipedia.
      • Recommended By: InfoWorld (2014), CIO (2014).
    • Google Apps Script – Wikipedia.
  • ActionScript – Primarily utilized with Adobe Flash – Wikipedia.
  • JScript.
• Eiffel – Wikipedia.
• Elm – Wikipedia.
• Erlang – Wikipedia.
  • Recommended By: InfoWorld (2014), CIO (2014), Dice (2014).
  • Elixir – Wikipedia.
• Esterel.
• Euphoria – Wikipedia.
• F
• F# – Wikipedia.
• Factor – Wikipedia.
• Falcon – Wikipedia.
• Fancy – Wikipedia.
• Fantom – Wikipedia.
• Felix – Wikipedia.
• Forth.
• Fortran – Wikipedia.
• FoxBase
  • FoxPro – Wikipedia.
    • Visual FoxPro – Wikipedia.
• Frege – Similar to Haskell. – Wikipedia.
• Game Maker Language – Wikipedia.
• Genie – Wikipedia.
• Goo.
• Gosu – Wikipedia.
• Groovy – Wikipedia.
  • Recommended By: InfoWorld (2014).
  • TIOBE: 43
  • Redmonk: 19
  • Codeeval: –
  • Stackoverflow: –
  • PYPL: –
• Haxe – Wikipedia.
• High Level Assembly – Wikipedia.
• Hop – Wikipedia.
• Icon – Wikipedia.
• Idris – Wikipedia.
• Io – Wikipedia.
• J – Wikipedia.
• JADE – Wikipedia.
• Java
  • AspectJ – Wikipedia.
  • Ateji PX – Wikipedia.
  • Ceylon – Written by Red Hat, compiles to both Java and JavaScript. – Wikipedia.
    • Recommended By: CIO (2014).
• Lisp
  • Arc – Founded by Paul Graham, used for Hacker News – Wikipedia.
  • Clojure – Wikipedia.
    • TIOBE: 65
    • Redmonk: 19
    • Codeeval: 16
    • Stackoverflow: –
    • PYPL: –
  • Common Lisp – Wikipedia.
    • ACL2 – Wikipedia.
  • Emacs – Wikipedia.
• Logo – Wikipedia.
• Mac Scripting
  • F-Script – Wikipedia.
• Nim – Wikipedia.
• Opa.
  • Recommended By: CIO (2014).
• Pascal – Wikipedia.
  • Object Pascal (Delphi) – Wikipedia.
• PL/I – IBM – Wikipedia.
• PowerBuilder
• Prolog – Wikipedia.
  • DataLog – Wikipedia.
• Python
  • Cython – Wikipedia.
• R – Wikipedia.
  • Recommended By:
    • Mashable (2015).
  • TIOBE: 19
  • Redmonk: 13
  • Codeeval: 17
  • Stackoverflow: –
  • PYPL: 10
• REBOL – Wikipedia.
• (ML) Standard ML
  • Alice ML – Wikipedia.
  • OCaml – Wikipedia.
    • Recommended By: InfoWorld (2014).
• Scratch – Wikipedia.
• Smalltalk – Wikipedia.
• Tcl – Wikipedia.
  • TIOBE: 96
  • Redmonk: –
  • Codeeval: 18
  • Stackoverflow: –
  • PYPL: –
• Unix Shells
  • Bash – Wikipedia.
  • Bourne – Wikipedia.
  • C (csh, tcsh) – Wikipedia.
  • Hamilton C – Wikipedia.
• Windows Scripting
  • Batch Files – Wikipedia.
  • PowerShell.

Other Small Guys

Specialized Languages

These languages aren’t used for general programming purposes but serve specific programming niches, e.g. big data analysis, scientific, mainframe, gaming, etc..

• R
• MATLAB
• Science: Interactive Data Language (IDL)
• Math: GAMS and GAP
• Mainframe: IBM HAScript, IBM RPG, ISPF
• Gaming: Hugo, Inform, JASS
• Children’s: Etoys

Otherwise Not Included

• Change Management Systems such as CFEngine, Ansible, Chef, or Puppet.
• Languages specifically oriented towards graphics processing units such as Cg or more generally graphics oriented such as High-Level Shading Language (Microsoft, HLSL).
• Audio Programming Languages such as ChucK, cSound, FAUST.
• Antiquated languages such as HyperTalk, IBM Basic Assembly, Informix-4GL, IMP, Information Processing Language (IPL).
• Languages which appear inactive and little utilized, such as Hume, ICI, Id, Ioke, ISLISP, J#, J++, JScript, JavaFX.
• Just Another Language (JAL).

To Be Retired

These languages may still be in heavy use, but they really should be retired. Their prevalence is due to existing applications needing updates rather than the development of new applications.

• Visual Basic (9th)
• COBOL (27th)
• Fortran (30th)
• ActionScript (35th)
• VBScript (49th)

Bibliography

• Wikipedia’s List of Programming Languages Article.
• Jeff Cogswell. “5 Programming Languages You’ll Need Next Year (and Beyond).” Dice, 7/29/14.
• Paul Rubens. “6 Emerging Programming Languages Career-Minded Developers Should Learn.” CIO, 6/5/14.
• Peter Wayner. “9 Cutting-Edge Programming Languages Worth Learning Now.” InfoWorld, 11/3/14.
• Rebecca Hiscott. “10 Programming Languages You Should Learn Right Now.” Mashable, 1/21/15.
• Todd Wasserman. “15 Programming Languages You Need to Know In 2015.” Mashable, 1/18/15.