Alternatives to COBOL

Compare COBOL alternatives for your business or organization using the curated list below. SourceForge ranks the best alternatives to COBOL in 2024. Compare features, ratings, user reviews, pricing, and more from COBOL competitors and alternatives in order to make an informed decision for your business.

  • 1
    AutoHotkey

    AutoHotkey

    AutoHotkey

    Define hotkeys for the mouse and keyboard, remap keys or buttons and autocorrect-like replacements. Creating simple hotkeys has never been easier; you can do it in just a few lines or less! AutoHotkey is a free, open-source scripting language for Windows that allows users to easily create small to complex scripts for all kinds of tasks such as form fillers, auto-clicking, macros, etc. AutoHotkey has easy-to-learn built-in commands for beginners. Experienced developers will love this full-fledged scripting language for fast prototyping and small projects. AutoHotkey gives you the freedom to automate any desktop task. It's small, fast, and runs out of the box. Best of all, it's free, open-source (GNU GPLv2), and beginner-friendly. AutoHotkey provides a simple, flexible syntax allowing you to focus more on the task at hand rather than every single little technicality. It supports not only the popular imperative-procedural paradigm, but also object-oriented and command-based programming.
    Starting Price: Free
  • 2
    Oxygene

    Oxygene

    RemObjects Software

    Pascal is more relevant today than ever, and modern Pascal implementations such as Oxygene have a lot to bring to the table. Oxygene is a powerful general-purpose programming language, designed to let developers create all imaginable kinds of projects on a wide variety of platforms. To achieve this, it provides a combination of language features that ease the development processes, from basic object-oriented language concepts found in most modern languages (such as the concept of classes with methods, properties, and events) to sophisticated specialized language features that enable and ease specific development tasks (such as creating safe, multi-threaded applications), many of those unique to Oxygene. All of the provided features are based on the foundation of Object Pascal and stay true to the language design paradigms that make Pascal great, readable, and discoverable. As an object-oriented language, most code written in Oxygene lives in "classes".
    Starting Price: $199 one-time payment
  • 3
    Lua

    Lua

    Lua

    Lua is a powerful, efficient, lightweight, embeddable scripting language. It supports procedural programming, object-oriented programming, functional programming, data-driven programming, and data description. Lua combines simple procedural syntax with powerful data description constructs based on associative arrays and extensible semantics. Lua is dynamically typed, runs by interpreting bytecode with a register-based virtual machine, and has automatic memory management with incremental garbage collection, making it ideal for configuration, scripting, and rapid prototyping. Lua has a deserved reputation for performance. To claim to be "as fast as Lua" is an aspiration of other scripting languages. Several benchmarks show Lua as the fastest language in the realm of interpreted scripting languages. Lua is fast not only in fine-tuned benchmark programs, but in real life too. Substantial fractions of large applications have been written in Lua.
    Starting Price: Free
  • 4
    Ring

    Ring

    Ring

    The Ring is a practical general-purpose multi-paradigm language. The supported programming paradigms are imperative, procedural, object-oriented, declarative using nested structures, functional, meta programming and natural programming. The language is portable (Windows, Linux, macOS, Android, WebAssembly, etc.) and can be used to create Console, GUI, Web, Games and Mobile applications. The language is designed to be simple, small and flexible. The language is simple, trying to be natural, encourage organization and comes with transparent and visual implementation. It comes with compact syntax and a group of features that enable the programmer to create natural interfaces and declarative domain-specific languages in a fraction of time. It is very small, flexible and comes with smart garbage collector that puts the memory under the programmer control. It supports many programming paradigms, comes with useful and practical libraries.
    Starting Price: Free
  • 5
    Synergy DBL

    Synergy DBL

    Synergex

    Synergy DBL is a proven, ANSI-standard business language with class libraries, a high-performance database, and .NET interoperability at the heart of the Synergy/DE product suite. Flexible and reliable, it gives you the power to create scalable, portable enterprise applications and supports both object-oriented and structured programming techniques. Synergy DBL comes in two forms: traditional Synergy DBL and Synergy DBL for .NET. Traditional Synergy DBL supports numerous open technologies (including XML, HTTPS, SSL, and ActiveX) that allow you to interface with third-party applications and data. The multi-pass Synergy DBL compiler supports strong prototyping and other strict error-detection features. Synergy DBL for .NET enables you to create Synergy libraries and applications that run natively in the .NET framework, then extend your applications by taking advantage of .NET Framework libraries and third-party controls and interoperating with applications written in other languages.
    Starting Price: Free
  • 6
    Component Pascal

    Component Pascal

    Component Pascal

    Component Pascal is a general-purpose language in the tradition of Pascal, Modula-2, and Oberon. Its most important features are block structure, modularity, separate compilation, static typing with strong type checking (also across module boundaries), type extension with methods, dynamic loading of modules, and garbage collection. Type extension makes Component Pascal an object-oriented language. An object is a variable of an abstract data type consisting of private data (its state) and procedures that operate on this data. Abstract data types are declared as extensible records. Component Pascal covers most terms of object-oriented languages by the established vocabulary of imperative languages in order to minimize the number of notions for similar concepts. Complete type safety and the requirement of a dynamic object model make Component Pascal a component-oriented language.
    Starting Price: Free
  • 7
    Visual Basic

    Visual Basic

    Microsoft

    Visual Basic is an object-oriented programming language developed by Microsoft. Using Visual Basic makes it fast and easy to create type-safe .NET apps. Visual Basic focuses on supplying more of the features of the Visual Basic Runtime (microsoft.visualbasic.dll) to .NET Core and is the first version of Visual Basic focused on .NET Core. Many portions of the Visual Basic Runtime depend on WinForms and these will be added in a later version of Visual Basic. .NET is a free, open-source development platform for building many kinds of apps. With .NET, your code and project files look and feel the same no matter which type of app you're building. You have access to the same runtime, API, and language capabilities with each app. A Visual Basic program is built up from standard building blocks. A solution comprises one or more projects. A project in turn can contain one or more assemblies. Each assembly is compiled from one or more source files.
    Starting Price: Free
  • 8
    Odin

    Odin

    Odin Language

    Odin is a general-purpose programming language with distinct typing built for high performance, modern systems and data-oriented programming. Odin is the C alternative for the Joy of Programming. Odin has been designed for readability, scalability, and orthogonality of concepts. Simplicity is complicated to get right, clear is better than clever. Odin allows for the highest performance through low-level control over the memory layout, memory management and custom allocators and so much more. Odin is designed from the bottom up for the modern computer, with built-in support for SOA data types, array programming, and other features. We go into programming because we love to solve problems. Why shouldn't our tools bring us joy whilst doing it? Enjoy programming again, with Odin!
    Starting Price: Free
  • 9
    C#

    C#

    Microsoft

    C# (also known as C Sharp, pronounced "See Sharp") is a modern, object-oriented, and type-safe programming language. C# enables developers to build many types of secure and robust applications that run in .NET. C# has its roots in the C family of languages and will be immediately familiar to C, C++, Java, and JavaScript programmers. This tour provides an overview of the major components of the language in C# 8 and earlier. C# is an object-oriented, component-oriented programming language. C# provides language constructs to directly support these concepts, making C# a natural language in which to create and use software components. Since its origin, C# has added features to support new workloads and emerging software design practices. At its core, C# is an object-oriented language. You define types and their behavior.
    Starting Price: Free
  • 10
    XAML

    XAML

    Microsoft

    XAML is a declarative markup language. As applied to the .NET Core programming model, XAML simplifies creating a UI for a .NET Core app. You can create visible UI elements in the declarative XAML markup, and then separate the UI definition from the run-time logic by using code-behind files that are joined to the markup through partial class definitions. XAML directly represents the instantiation of objects in a specific set of backing types defined in assemblies. This is unlike most other markup languages, which are typically an interpreted language without such a direct tie to a backing type system. XAML enables a workflow where separate parties can work on the UI and the logic of an app, using potentially different tools. When represented as text, XAML files are XML files that generally have the .xaml extension. The files can be encoded by any XML encoding, but encoding as UTF-8 is typical.
    Starting Price: Free
  • 11
    Objective-C

    Objective-C

    Objective-C

    Objective-C is the primary programming language you use when writing software for OS X and iOS. It’s a superset of the C programming language and provides object-oriented capabilities and a dynamic runtime. Objective-C inherits the syntax, primitive types, and flow control statements of C and adds syntax for defining classes and methods. It also adds language-level support for object graph management and object literals while providing dynamic typing and binding, deferring many responsibilities until runtime. When building apps for OS X or iOS, you’ll spend most of your time working with objects. Those objects are instances of Objective-C classes, some of which are provided for you by Cocoa or Cocoa Touch and some of which you’ll write yourself.
  • 12
    Scala

    Scala

    Scala

    Scala combines object-oriented and functional programming in one concise, high-level language. Scala's static types help avoid bugs in complex applications, and its JVM and JavaScript runtimes let you build high-performance systems with easy access to huge ecosystems of libraries. The Scala compiler is smart about static types. Most of the time, you need not tell it the types of your variables. Instead, its powerful type inference will figure them out for you. In Scala, case classes are used to represent structural data types. They implicitly equip the class with meaningful toString, equals and hashCode methods, as well as the ability to be deconstructed with pattern matching. In Scala, functions are values, and can be defined as anonymous functions with a concise syntax.
    Starting Price: Free
  • 13
    C++

    C++

    C++

    C++ is a simple and clear language in its expressions. It is true that a piece of code written with C++ may be seen by a stranger of programming a bit more cryptic than some other languages due to the intensive use of special characters ({}[]*&!|...), but once one knows the meaning of such characters it can be even more schematic and clear than other languages that rely more on English words. Also, the simplification of the input/output interface of C++ in comparison to C and the incorporation of the standard template library in the language, makes the communication and manipulation of data in a program written in C++ as simple as in other languages, without losing the power it offers. It is a programming model that treats programming from a perspective where each component is considered an object, with its own properties and methods, replacing or complementing structured programming paradigm, where the focus was on procedures and parameters.
    Starting Price: Free
  • 14
    Common Lisp

    Common Lisp

    Common Lisp

    Common Lisp is the modern, multi-paradigm, high-performance, compiled, ANSI-standardized, most prominent (along with Scheme) descendant of the long-running family of Lisp programming languages. Common Lisp is known for being extremely flexible, having excellent support for object oriented programming, and fast prototyping capabilities. It also sports an extremely powerful macro system that allows you to tailor the language to your application, and a flexible run-time environment that allows modification and debugging of running applications (excellent for server-side development and long-running critical software). It is a multi-paradigm programming language that allows you to choose the approach and paradigm according to your application domain.
    Starting Price: Free
  • 15
    Unlambda

    Unlambda

    Unlambda

    Unlambda is a programming language. Nothing remarkable there. The originality of Unlambda is that it stands as the unexpected intersection of two marginal families of languages. Functional programming languages, of which the canonical representative is Scheme (a Lisp dialect). This means that the basic object manipulated by the language (and indeed the only one as far as Unlambda is concerned) is the function. Rather, Unlambda uses a functional approach to programming: the only form of objects it manipulates are functions. Each function takes a function as an argument and returns a function. Apart from a binary “apply” operation, Unlambda provides several built-in functions (the most important ones being the K and S combinators). User-defined functions can be created, but not saved or named, because Unlambda does not have any variables.
    Starting Price: Free
  • 16
    GameMaker Language (GML)
    The GameMaker Language (also called simply GML) is the proprietary GameMaker scripting language. This language is structured to permit users to create their games in an intuitive and flexible way while offering all the power of any other major programming language. It is also the basis for GML Visual and can be used in conjunction with that if required. Each event has its own tab in the editor and you can add, edit, or remove code from them at any time (for more information on events see Object Events). The code itself must have a basic structure and can contain resource indices, variables, functions, expressions, keywords, etc. all of which are explained in the sections below. If you are a novice to programming or making the switch from GML Visual, it is recommended that you start with the page on basic code structure and then read through all the other pages in this section, testing code from each one within GameMaker itself.
    Starting Price: Free
  • 17
    C

    C

    C

    C is a programming language created in 1972 which remains very important and widely used today. C is a general-purpose, imperative, procedural language. The C language can be used to develop a wide variety of different software and applications including operating systems, software applications, code compilers, databases, and more.
  • 18
    Java

    Java

    Oracle

    The Java™ Programming Language is a general-purpose, concurrent, strongly typed, class-based object-oriented language. It is normally compiled to the bytecode instruction set and binary format defined in the Java Virtual Machine Specification. In the Java programming language, all source code is first written in plain text files ending with the .java extension. Those source files are then compiled into .class files by the javac compiler. A .class file does not contain code that is native to your processor; it instead contains bytecodes — the machine language of the Java Virtual Machine1 (Java VM). The java launcher tool then runs your application with an instance of the Java Virtual Machine.
    Starting Price: Free
  • 19
    Julia

    Julia

    Julia

    Julia was designed from the beginning for high performance. Julia programs compile to efficient native code for multiple platforms via LLVM. Julia uses multiple dispatch as a paradigm, making it easy to express many object-oriented and functional programming patterns. The talk on the Unreasonable Effectiveness of Multiple Dispatch explains why it works so well. Julia is dynamically typed, feels like a scripting language, and has good support for interactive use. Julia provides asynchronous I/O, metaprogramming, debugging, logging, profiling, a package manager, and more. One can build entire Applications and Microservices in Julia. Julia is an open source project with over 1,000 contributors. It is made available under the MIT license.
    Starting Price: Free
  • 20
    Prolog

    Prolog

    Prolog

    Prolog is a logic programming language associated with artificial intelligence and computational linguistics. Prolog has its roots in first-order logic, a formal logic, and unlike many other programming languages, Prolog is intended primarily as a declarative programming language, the program logic is expressed in terms of relations, represented as facts and rules. A computation is initiated by running a query over these relations. Prolog was one of the first logic programming languages and remains the most popular such language today, with several free and commercial implementations available. The language has been used for theorem proving, expert systems, term rewriting, type systems, and automated planning, as well as its original intended field of use, natural language processing. Modern Prolog environments support the creation of graphical user interfaces, as well as administrative and networked applications.
  • 21
    QML

    QML

    Qt

    QML is a declarative language that allows user interfaces to be described in terms of their visual components and how they interact and relate with one another. It is a highly readable language that was designed to enable components to be interconnected in a dynamic manner, and it allows components to be easily reused and customized within a user interface. Using the QtQuick module, designers and developers can easily build fluid animated user interfaces in QML, and have the option of connecting these user interfaces to any back-end C++ libraries. QML is a user interface specification and programming language. It allows developers and designers alike to create highly performant, fluidly animated and visually appealing applications. QML offers a highly readable, declarative, JSON-like syntax with support for imperative JavaScript expressions combined with dynamic property bindings.
    Starting Price: Free
  • 22
    Pascal

    Pascal

    Pascal

    Pascal is a procedural and imperative programming language. Pascal is a simple and efficient programming language designed for developers that want to build applications in structured ways. Free Pascal is a mature, versatile, open source Pascal compiler. It can target many processor architectures: Intel x86 (16 and 32 bit), AMD64/x86-64, PowerPC, PowerPC64, SPARC, SPARC64, ARM, AArch64, MIPS, Motorola 68k, AVR, and the JVM. Supported operating systems include Windows (16/32/64 bit, CE, and native NT), Linux, Mac OS X/iOS/iPhoneSimulator/Darwin, FreeBSD and other BSD flavors, DOS (16 bit, or 32 bit DPMI), OS/2, AIX, Android, Haiku, Nintendo GBA/DS/Wii, AmigaOS, MorphOS, AROS, Atari TOS, and various embedded platforms. Additionally, support for RISC-V (32/64), Xtensa, and Z80 architectures, and for the LLVM compiler infrastructure is available in the development version. Additionally, the Free Pascal team maintains a transpiler for pascal to Javascript called pas2js.
  • 23
    JSON

    JSON

    JSON

    JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) is a lightweight data-interchange format. It is easy for humans to read and write. It is easy for machines to parse and generate. It is based on a subset of the JavaScript Programming Language Standard ECMA-262 3rd Edition - December 1999. JSON is a text format that is completely language independent but uses conventions that are familiar to programmers of the C-family of languages, including C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, Perl, Python, and many others. These properties make JSON an ideal data-interchange language. JSON is built on two structures: 1. A collection of name/value pairs. In various languages, this is realized as an object, record, struct, dictionary, hash table, keyed list, or associative array. 2. An ordered list of values. In most languages, this is realized as an array, vector, list, or sequence. These are universal data structures. Virtually all modern programming languages support them in one form or another.
    Starting Price: Free
  • 24
    Wolfram Language

    Wolfram Language

    Wolfram Language

    We comply with providing the computational paradigm. The Wolfram Language provides access to computing power at a significantly higher level than ever before, leveraging built-in computational intelligence based on a wide variety of algorithms and real-world knowledge, carefully integrated over three decades. The Wolfram Language is scalable for programs both small and large, with out-of-the-box deployment both on-premises and in the cloud. In addition, the Wolfram Language builds on clear principles and an elegant unified symbolic framework to create what is now emerging as the world's most productive programming language, and the first true computational communication language for humans and AI.
    Starting Price: Free
  • 25
    Scheme

    Scheme

    Scheme

    Scheme is a general-purpose computer programming language. It is a high-level language, supporting operations on structured data such as strings, lists, and vectors, as well as operations on more traditional data such as numbers and characters. While Scheme is often identified with symbolic applications, its rich set of data types and flexible control structures make it a truly versatile language. Scheme has been employed to write text editors, optimize compilers, operating systems, graphics packages, expert systems, numerical applications, financial analysis packages, virtual reality systems, and practically every other type of application imaginable. Scheme is a fairly simple language to learn since it is based on a handful of syntactic forms and semantic concepts and since the interactive nature of most implementations encourages experimentation. Scheme is a challenging language to understand fully.
    Starting Price: Free
  • 26
    Emojicode

    Emojicode

    Emojicode

    Emojicode is an open-source, full-blown programming language, consisting of emojis. As a multi-paradigm language, Emojicode features object orientation, optionals, generics, closures, and protocols. Emojicode compiles native machine code using lots of optimizations that make your code fast. Emojicode comes with a comprehensive set of default packages. And you can easily write your own. We believe that Emojis have expressive force. Let’s use that to make programming more fun and accessible. Emojicode is a straightforward language to learn, whatever background you have. Our documentation is known to be excellent and stuffed with walk-through guides and examples. You can help Emojicode grow! Development takes place on GitHub and you’re invited to drop in. Before you install Emojicode make sure you have a C++ compiler and linker installed. clang++ or g++ is fine, for instance. The Emojicode compiler can only link binaries if such a compiler is available.
    Starting Price: Free
  • 27
    Nix

    Nix

    NixOS

    Nix is a tool that takes a unique approach to package management and system configuration. Learn how to make reproducible, declarative, and reliable systems. Nix builds packages in isolation from each other. This ensures that they are reproducible and don't have undeclared dependencies, so if a package works on one machine, it will also work on another. Nix makes it trivial to share development and build environments for your projects, regardless of what programming languages and tools you’re using. Nix ensures that installing or upgrading one package cannot break other packages. It allows you to roll back to previous versions and ensures that no package is in an inconsistent state during an upgrade. Nix is a purely functional package manager. This means that it treats packages like values in purely functional programming languages such as Haskell, they are built by functions that don’t have side effects, and they never change after they have been built.
    Starting Price: Free
  • 28
    V Programming Language

    V Programming Language

    V Programming Language

    Simple, fast, safe, and compiled. For developing maintainable software. Simple language for building maintainable programs. You can learn the entire language by going through the documentation over a weekend, and in most cases, there's only one way to do something. This results in simple, readable, and maintainable code. This results in simple, readable, and maintainable code. Despite being simple, V gives a lot of power to the developer and can be used in pretty much every field, including systems programming, webdev, gamedev, GUI, mobile, science, embedded, tooling, etc. V is very similar to Go. If you know Go, you already know 80% of V. Bounds checking, No undefined values, no variable shadowing, immutable variables by default, immutable structs by default, option/result and mandatory error checks, sum types, generics, and immutable function args by default, mutable args have to be marked on call.
  • 29
    Pine Script

    Pine Script

    TradingView

    Pine Script® is TradingView’s programming language. It allows traders to create their own trading tools and run them on our servers. We designed Pine Script® as a lightweight, yet powerful, language for developing indicators and strategies that you can then backtest. Most of TradingView’s built-in indicators are written in Pine Script®, and our thriving community of Pine Script® programmers has published more than 100,000 community scripts. It’s our explicit goal to keep Pine Script® accessible and easy to understand for the broadest possible audience. Pine Script® is cloud-based and therefore different from client-side programming languages. While we likely won’t develop Pine Script® into a full-fledged language, we do constantly improve it and are always happy to consider requests for new features. Because each script uses computational resources in the cloud, we must impose limits in order to share these resources fairly among our users.
    Starting Price: Free
  • 30
    VBScript

    VBScript

    Microsoft

    VBScript is a programming language included with Microsoft Internet Explorer. For other browsers, contact your vendor about support. VBScript 2.0 (or later) is recommended for use with Agent. Although earlier versions of VBScript may work with Agent, they lack certain functions that you may want to use. You can download VBScript 2.0 and obtain further information on VBScript at the Microsoft Downloads site and the Microsoft VBScript site. With VBScript (2.0 or later), you can verify whether Microsoft Agent is installed by trying to create the object and checking to see if it exists. The following sample demonstrates how to check for the Agent control without triggering an auto-download of the control.
    Starting Price: Free
  • 31
    QBasic

    QBasic

    QBasic

    QBasic as well as QuickBasic is an easy-to-learn programming language (and therefore ideal for beginners), based on DOS operating system, but also executable on Windows. QBasic is the slimmed-down version of QuickBasic. Compared to QuickBasic, QBasic is limited as it lacks a compiler. Therefore QBasic cannot be used to produce executables (.exe files). The source code (usual files with .bas extension) can only be executed immediately by the built-in QBasic interpreter. Furthermore, QuickBasic has a more extensive command set than QBasic. The best way to learn to program is to start with a lightweight programming language and a simple compiler. Qbasic (short: QB) has great advantages for pros and beginners that other compilers can't offer. Back then, when DOS was the most widely used operating system, QB IDE enjoyed great popularity. On current Windows systems, QBasic/QuickBASIC requires a DOS emulator, e.g. DOSBox.
    Starting Price: Free
  • 32
    OCaml

    OCaml

    OCaml

    OCaml is a general-purpose, industrial-strength programming language with an emphasis on expressiveness and safety. OCaml’s powerful type system means more bugs are caught at compile time, and large, complex codebases are easier to maintain. This makes it a good language for running critical code. At the same time, sophisticated inference makes the type system unobtrusive, creating a smooth developer experience. One is a bytecode compiler which generates small, portable executables and is very fast. The other is a native code compiler that produces more efficient machine code; its performance matches the highest standards of modern compilers. OCaml has great support for the most popular editors. VS Code is recommended for beginners, and for power users there is deep integration with Vim and Emacs. OCaml has a rich and dynamic community and best-in-class tooling.
    Starting Price: Free
  • 33
    NoSQL

    NoSQL

    NoSQL

    NoSQL is a domain-specific programming language used for accessing, managing, and manipulating non-tabular databases. A NoSQL (originally referring to "non-SQL" or "non-relational") database provides a mechanism for storage and retrieval of data that is modeled in means other than the tabular relations used in relational databases. Such databases have existed since the late 1960s, but the name "NoSQL" was only coined in the early 21st century, triggered by the needs of Web 2.0 companies. NoSQL databases are increasingly used in big data and real-time web applications.NoSQL systems are also sometimes called Not only SQL to emphasize that they may support SQL-like query languages or sit alongside SQL databases in polyglot-persistent architectures. Many NoSQL stores compromise consistency (in the sense of the CAP theorem) in favor of availability, partition tolerance, and speed. Barriers to the greater adoption of NoSQL stores include the use of low-level query languages.
  • 34
    CSS

    CSS

    CSS

    CSS, short for Cascading Style Sheets, is a style sheet language used by web developers to structure the HTML and other elements of a website. CSS is one of the most widely used languages on the web. For style sheets to work, it is important that your markup be free of errors. A convenient way to automatically fix markup errors is to use the HTML Tidy utility. This also tidies the markup making it easier to read and easier to edit. I recommend you regularly run Tidy over any markup you are editing. Tidy is very effective at cleaning up markup created by authoring tools with sloppy habits. Each style property starts with the property's name, then a colon and lastly the value for this property. When there is more than one style property in the list, you need to use a semicolon between each of them to delimit one property from the next.
    Starting Price: Free
  • 35
    ActionScript

    ActionScript

    ActionScript

    The ActionScript® scripting language lets you add complex interactivity, playback control, and data display to your application. You can add ActionScript in the authoring environment by using the Actions panel, Script window, or an external editor. ActionScript follows its own rules of syntax, and reserved keywords, and lets you use variables to store and retrieve information. ActionScript includes a large library of built‑in classes that let you create objects to perform many useful tasks. You do not have to understand every ActionScript element to begin scripting. If you have a clear goal, you can start building scripts with simple actions. ActionScript and JavaScript are both rooted in the ECMA-262 standard, the international standard for the ECMAScript scripting language. For this reason, developers who are familiar with JavaScript can find ActionScript immediately familiar. Animate includes more than one version of ActionScript to meet the needs of different kinds of developers.
  • 36
    Eiffel

    Eiffel

    Eiffel Software

    Eiffel is the most comprehensive approach to the construction of successful object-oriented software. You spend less on development, debugging, and maintenance. You get the bugs before they get you. You release quality products ahead of your competitors. Easier in every way, understanding, maintenance, reuse, and extension. Eiffel is the only approach that covers analysis, design, implementation, and maintenance in a single framework. Systems developed using Eiffel can be made portable across major industry platforms. Based on a small number of powerful ideas from computer science and software engineering. Products of all phases are recorded in a single document with multiple views. Exists to express the products of the Eiffel Method. Supports features not always available in competing technologies. Exception handling based on software specification (versus ad hoc try/catch). Widely recognized as simultaneously the simplest and most complete implementation of object-oriented concepts.
    Starting Price: Free
  • 37
    APL

    APL

    APL

    APL is an array-oriented programming language that will change the way you think about problems and data. With a powerful, concise syntax, it lets you develop shorter programs that enable you to think more about the problem you're trying to solve than how to express it to a computer.
    Starting Price: Free
  • 38
    Vyper

    Vyper

    Vyper

    Vyper is a contract-oriented, pythonic programming language that targets the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). Security: It should be possible and natural to build secure smart-contracts in Vyper. Language and compiler simplicity: The language and the compiler implementation should strive to be simple. Auditability: Vyper code should be maximally human-readable. Furthermore, it should be maximally difficult to write misleading code. Simplicity for the reader is more important than simplicity for the writer, and simplicity for readers with low prior experience with Vyper (and low prior experience with programming in general) is particularly important.
    Starting Price: Free
  • 39
    IronPython

    IronPython

    IronPython

    IronPython is an open-source implementation of the Python programming language which is tightly integrated with .NET. IronPython can use .NET and Python libraries, and other .NET languages can use Python code just as easily. Experience a more interactive .NET and Python development experience with Python Tools for Visual Studio. IronPython is an excellent addition to .NET, providing Python developers with the power of the .NET. Existing .NET developers can also use IronPython as a fast and expressive scripting language for embedding, testing, or writing a new application from scratch. The CLR is a great platform for creating programming languages, and the DLR makes it all the better for dynamic languages. Also, the .NET (base class library, presentation foundation, etc.) gives developers an amazing amount of functionality and power. IronPython uses Python syntax and standard libraries and so your Python code will need to be updated accordingly.
    Starting Price: Free
  • 40
    ZenScript

    ZenScript

    CraftTweaker

    ZenScript originated from MineTweaker where a simple programming language is needed to allow users without programming knowledge to be able to execute simple commands by following the tutorials for it. Originally MineTweaker had a simple one-line-at-a-time parsed scripting system, but it quickly became clear that it wasn't flexible enough, so a simple parsed language was created. This parsed language worked quite well but was very inefficient as each value was wrapped into its own object. ZenScript allows mixed typed and typeless behavior. You don't need to define types anywhere, the compile will infer them where possible and exhibit typeless behavior when the type is effectively unknown. In nearly all the cases, the type is perfectly known and execution runs at native Java speed. Since there are types, they can be documented and enforced.
    Starting Price: Free
  • 41
    PascalABC.NET

    PascalABC.NET

    PascalABC.NET

    The new generation Pascal programming language combines the simplicity of classic Pascal, a great number of modern extensions, and the broad capabilities of Microsoft .NET Framework. Free, simple, and powerful IDE. Built-in form designer for rapid development of Windows desktop applications. Download the latest version of PascalABC.NET with a build-in form designer. Several extensions of the Pascal language, including the foreach operator, in-block variable definitions, auto type deduction in variable definitions, simplified syntax of units, method implementations inside classes and records, a new operator for object construction, anonymous classes, auto-classes, BigIntegers, etc. The most modern features of programming languages like n-dimensional dynamic arrays, generics, interfaces, operator overloading, exceptions, garbage collection, and lambda expressions. IDE with integrated debugger, IntelliSense system, code templates, and code auto-formatting.
    Starting Price: Free
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    RemObjects Mercury

    RemObjects Mercury

    RemObjects Mercury

    Mercury is an implementation of the BASIC programming language that is fully code-compatible with Microsoft Visual Basic.NET™, but takes it to the next level, and to new horizons. With Mercury, you will be able to build your existing VB.NET projects and leverage your Visual Basic™ language experience to write code for any modern target platform. You can mix Mercury code with any of the other five Elements languages in the same project if you like! The Mercury language will be deeply integrated into our development environments. Develop your projects in our smart yet lightweight IDEs, Water on Windows or Fire on Mac, with project templates, code completion, integrated debugging for all platforms, and many other advanced development features. Of course, Mercury will also integrate into Visual Studio™ 2017, 2019 and 2022. With Elements, all languages are created equal. Even within the same project, you can mix Mercury, C#, Swift, Java, Oxygene and Go.
    Starting Price: $49 per month
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    Zig

    Zig

    Zig Software Foundation

    Zig is a general-purpose programming language and toolchain for maintaining robust, optimal and reusable software. Focus on debugging your application rather than debugging your programming language knowledge. A fresh approach to metaprogramming based on compile-time code execution and lazy evaluation. No hidden control flow. No hidden memory allocations. No preprocessor, no macros. Call any function at compile-time. Manipulate types as values without runtime overhead. Comptime emulates the target architecture. Use Zig as a zero-dependency, drop-in C/C++ compiler that supports cross-compilation out-of-the-box. Leverage zig build to create a consistent development environment across all platforms. Add a Zig compilation unit to C/C++ projects; cross-language LTO is enabled by default.
    Starting Price: Free
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    Fortran

    Fortran

    Fortran

    Fortran has been designed from the ground up for computationally intensive applications in science and engineering. Mature and battle-tested compilers and libraries allow you to write code that runs close to the metal, fast. Fortran is statically and strongly typed, which allows the compiler to catch many programming errors early on for you. This also allows the compiler to generate efficient binary code. Fortran is a relatively small language that is surprisingly easy to learn and use. Expressing most mathematical and arithmetic operations over large arrays is as simple as writing them as equations on a whiteboard. Fortran is a natively parallel programming language with intuitive array-like syntax to communicate data between CPUs. You can run almost the same code on a single CPU, on a shared-memory multicore system, or on a distributed-memory HPC or cloud-based system.
    Starting Price: Free
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    Forth

    Forth

    Forth

    Forth, the computer language was created for programming embedded and real-time applications. Today, it is available for developing applications on Windows, DOS, and variants of Unix that include macOS. Additionally, commercial-grade Forth cross-compilers generate highly optimized code that runs on a variety of microprocessors and microcontrollers and proves themselves very capable in custom-hardware environments. Forth is a high-level programming language, although most versions include an assembler. Fourth-system providers often include software tools to help application code make good use of system resources. Forth is interactive. It is conducive to developing modular, well-tested code in shorter development times. It can also result in very concise code. Some programmers are not accustomed to languages with such brevity, directness, and (apparent) simplicity. Forth has a reputation for rapid development, lean code, and superb performance.
    Starting Price: $399 one-time payment
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    Ruby

    Ruby

    Ruby Language

    Wondering why Ruby is so popular? Its fans call it a beautiful, artful language. And yet, they say it’s handy and practical. Since its public release in 1995, Ruby has drawn devoted coders worldwide. In 2006, Ruby achieved mass acceptance. With active user groups formed in the world’s major cities and Ruby-related conferences filled to capacity. Ruby-Talk, the primary mailing list for discussion of the Ruby language, climbed to an average of 200 messages per day in 2006. It has dropped in recent years as the size of the community pushed discussion from one central list into many smaller groups. Ruby is ranked among the top 10 on most of the indices that measure the growth and popularity of programming languages worldwide (such as the TIOBE index). Much of the growth is attributed to the popularity of software written in Ruby, particularly the Ruby on Rails web framework.
    Starting Price: Free
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    GAUSS

    GAUSS

    Aptech Systems

    An easy-to-use data analysis and visualization environment based on the powerful, fast and efficient GAUSS Matrix Programming Language. Prototype to production: Embed custom GAUSS analytics directly in enterprise or web-applications. Customizable programs that extend the GAUSS platform in the fields of econometrics, finance, risk analysis, statistics and more. You can code ideas and techniques straight from the latest journals in GAUSS as quickly as you can with a pen and paper. The GAUSS matrix language is the most natural way to bring cutting edge math, statistics and machine learning to life. GAUSS is the product of more than three decades of innovation and refinement of efficient, native code. This combined with our optimizing compiler and modern threading capabilities, allows you to get your answers before the competition.
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    XSharp (X#)

    XSharp (X#)

    XSharp

    X# is an open-source development language for .NET, based on the xBase language. It comes in different flavors, such as Core, Visual Objects, Vulcan.NET, xBase++, Harbour, Foxpro, and more. X# has been built on top of Roslyn, the open-source architecture behind the current Microsoft C# and Microsoft Visual Basic compilers. We have added a new options page (tools/options/text editor/X#) where you can control which suggestions the editor will suggest in the "general" code completion list. Code completion after a colon or dot will show namespaces, types, members, etc. And code completion after AS or IS will show types and namespaces. Several preprocessor fixes to make the preprocessor more compatible with FoxPro and Xbase++. We have also added the #if and #stdout commands. We added several smaller fixes in the RDD system to improve the compatibility with Visual Objects, XBase++ and FoxPro.
    Starting Price: Free
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    JavaScript

    JavaScript

    JavaScript

    JavaScript is a scripting language and programming language for the web that enables developers to build dynamic elements on the web. Over 97% of the websites in the world use client-side JavaScript. JavaScript is one of the most important scripting languages on the web. Strings in JavaScript are contained within a pair of either single quotation marks '' or double quotation marks "". Both quotes represent Strings but be sure to choose one and STICK WITH IT. If you start with a single quote, you need to end with a single quote. There are pros and cons to using both IE single quotes tend to make it easier to write HTML within Javascript as you don’t have to escape the line with a double quote. Let’s say you’re trying to use quotation marks inside a string. You’ll need to use opposite quotation marks inside and outside of JavaScript single or double quotes.
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    Python

    Python

    Python

    The core of extensible programming is defining functions. Python allows mandatory and optional arguments, keyword arguments, and even arbitrary argument lists. Whether you're new to programming or an experienced developer, it's easy to learn and use Python. Python can be easy to pick up whether you're a first-time programmer or you're experienced with other languages. The following pages are a useful first step to get on your way to writing programs with Python! The community hosts conferences and meetups to collaborate on code, and much more. Python's documentation will help you along the way, and the mailing lists will keep you in touch. The Python Package Index (PyPI) hosts thousands of third-party modules for Python. Both Python's standard library and the community-contributed modules allow for endless possibilities.