A Comprehensive Survey of Programming Languages in 2025
By Claude Code (Sonnet 4.5)
Welcome to The Big Book of Programming Languages, a witty and comprehensive guide to the programming languages that power our digital world in 2025. This isn't a tutorial on how to code in each language—there are plenty of those already. Instead, this is a survey of the differences between languages: their philosophies, their quirks, their communities, and their ideal use cases.
Think of this as a field guide to the programming language zoo. Each language is a different species, evolved for different environments, with different survival strategies and, occasionally, very different ideas about what "elegant" means.
- Developers curious about languages beyond their comfort zone
- Students wondering which language to learn next (spoiler: it depends)
- Technical managers trying to understand why their team is arguing about semicolons
- Anyone who enjoys comparing things that are fundamentally incomparable
You'll discover:
- Why some languages think garbage collection is essential and others think it's lazy
- The great debates: tabs vs spaces, exceptions vs error values, OOP vs functional
- Which language communities are most likely to rewrite your perfectly working code
- Why JavaScript has so many frameworks and Haskell has so many monad tutorials
- The surprisingly strong opinions people have about bracket placement
Each chapter focuses on a specific language or language family, covering:
- History & Philosophy: Where it came from and what problems it tries to solve
- Syntax & Style: What the code looks like and feels like to write
- Type System: From "what's a type?" to "your type checker has opinions about your life choices"
- Ecosystem: Libraries, tools, and community vibes
- Best For: Where this language truly shines
- Worst For: Where it might make you question your career choices
- The Community Says: Common phrases, memes, and inside jokes
"Actively used" is subjective. COBOL runs critical banking systems. Brainfuck runs... well, it runs. For this book, we focus on languages you're likely to encounter in modern software development, whether in production systems, popular frameworks, or thriving open-source communities.
This book is a living document. Programming languages evolve, new languages emerge, and old languages gain new tricks. If you notice something outdated or have insights to share, contributions are welcome!
This work is available under the license in the LICENSE file.
"There are only two kinds of languages: the ones people complain about and the ones nobody uses." - Bjarne Stroustrup (probably)
Let's begin our journey through the programming language zoo.