Part 1 of a series on comparison between programming languages: C, C++, Java, Python, R, Rust, Scala & C# compiled from WIKIPEDIA

C:

• Invented in 1970s
• Used widely in operating systems and driver programming
• Imperative, procedural, compiled and structured with low level access to memory
• Cross platform capability
• Has had influence on C++, Java, C# and other languages
• Concepts: Functions, Data Structures, Input Output, Pointers, Run-Time polymorphism, Recursions, Static data types
• Limited keywords
• Directly compiles to machine instructions
• Static, automatic & dynamic memory allocation possible
• Runtime problems can happen in memory and other areas
• No support for object orientation & functional programming

C++:

• C with classes, extension of C
• Support for object oriented, generics & functional programming
• Compiled & low level memory access
• Systems programming, embedded systems, games, servers and more
• Standardized by ISO
• Inherits & builds on top of most of the syntax of C
• Static, automatic, thread & dynamic memory management
• Templates with implementation of generics concept is possible
• Operator overloading
• Compile time & runtime polymorphism possible
• Support for lambda expressions
• Enum data type
• Core & standard library with multi-threading, regular expressions, smart pointers
• STL – Standard template library
• Criticism: Overtly complex

Java:

• General purpose, high level, object oriented, write once run anywhere
• Java -> ByteCode -> JVM
• Automatic memory management & garbage collection
• Generics, Spring, Functional, JavaEE, Scala, Kotlin and many other projects have come out from Java
• Mostly used for application programming
• Used in Android and as a base for many other frameworks & programming langauges

Python:

• High level, general purpose
• Focusses on code readability & uses concepts like indentation
• Automatic memory management
• Features from structured, object oriented & functional programming
• Large ecosystem of libraries
• Used in machine learning, web development and many areas of data science

R:

• Focussed on statistics & graphics
• Interpreted, features from procedural & object oriented
• Large ecosystem of libraries / packages
• Commercial options available

RUST:

• Focussed on systems programming & being looked as a replacement for C & C++ by many
• Major focus on type safety, concurrency and memory safety
• Only valid references allowed for memory except few other scenarios
• Object lifecycle & variable scope checking at compile time itself unlike many languages that do this at runtime
• Strongly and statically typed
• Generics
• Ownership & lifetimes concept introduced over objects
• Features of functional programming

Scala:

• Functional & object oriented features
• Many functional features are implemented: No difference between statement & expressions, Lazy evaluation, Currying and Type inference
• Strong & statically typed
• Options to compile & run on JVM or as JavaScript or as native code

C#:

• Multi paradigm
• Static & strong typing
• Functional, generic, object & component oriented features
• Common Language Infrastructure standard driven which helps to get Common Intermediate Language for runtime
• Metaprogramming concept is used
• Garbage collector & detailed memory management techniques exist

References:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_programming_languages
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C_(programming_language)
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%2B%2B
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_(programming_language)
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Python_(programming_language)
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_(programming_language)
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rust_(programming_language)
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scala_(programming_language)
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C_Sharp_(programming_language)

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