← /code

/language_

Programming languages · long-form guides. One language per page — history, features, ecosystem, current state.

Latest•2026.05 · TypeScript•Site architecture →
∑
// Side-by-side

One Ao5, seventeen languages

The same WCA Average-of-5, written seventeen times — watch how each language handles DNF / Optional / sorting / type systems

→
⟲
// Side-by-side

One scramble parser, seventeen languages

The same 3x3 WCA scramble parser, written seventeen times — sum types vs Result vs Optional vs exceptions, head to head

→

TypeScript

JavaScript, engineered

From 2010 inception to 2025: GitHub #1 language, native tongue of the AI tool chain

→
R

Rust

Systems, refined

From a 2006 side project by Graydon to Linux kernel modules in 2025 and a wholesale rewrite of the AI-era tool chain

→
Go

Go

Simplicity meets concurrency

From a 2007 Google lunch discussion to powering Docker / Kubernetes — and now the language Microsoft picked to rewrite TypeScript itself

→
Py

Python

Glue of the AI era

A 1991 Christmas-break side project by Guido — 35 years on, the native tongue of PyTorch / Hugging Face / Jupyter and the AI research world

→
C

C

Mother of all systems languages

Bell Labs / Dennis Ritchie, 1972. Unix's native tongue, 33M lines of Linux, and the language under every GPU kernel call in the AI era

→
C++

C++

Mother tongue of AI kernels

Stroustrup's "C with Classes," 1979. Modern C++ 11/20/26 keeps reviving. PyTorch / TensorFlow / Chrome / V8 / Unreal all C++ underneath

→
Zig

Zig

Another road for systems

Started by Andrew Kelley in 2016, still pre-1.0 at 0.16. Bun, TigerBeetle and Ghostty hold up a fresh ecosystem; ZSF pulled $512K — its largest industry pledge ever — in 2025

→
Sw

Swift

Apple's modern answer

WWDC 2014, led by Chris Lattner. From an Objective-C replacement to visionOS's anointed language, with Embedded Swift and server-side now in play

→
Kt

Kotlin

JetBrains' Java revolution

Started near Kotlin Island in 2010, 1.0 in 2016, Android Kotlin-first in 2019, Compose Multiplatform stable on iOS in 2024 — one codebase, four targets

→
Ja

Java

The JVM's evergreen

From Sun's 1991 Oak project to a top-3 enterprise language in 2026 — Java 21's virtual threads make it sharp again on high-concurrency servers

→
JS

JavaScript

Native tongue of the web

A 10-day side project by Brendan Eich in 1995 — 30 years on, tied for #1 on GitHub and the most-generated language by AI tools

→
Mo

Mojo

Python's acceleration off-ramp

Chris Lattner's third language (LLVM → Swift → Mojo). Born 2023, already the first credible challenger to the CUDA monopoly by 2026

→
C#

C#

Twin language of .NET and Unity

Anders Hejlsberg's 2000 answer to Java (same person behind Turbo Pascal, Delphi, and later TypeScript). From Windows-only to open-source .NET Core, plus ~70% of all games via Unity

→
Rb

Ruby

Optimised for programmer happiness

Matz released Ruby in Japan in 1995; in 2004 DHH extracted Rails and kicked off the Web 2.0 decade. GitHub / Shopify / Stripe still run on it in 2026, and YJIT has it sharp again

→
Ph

PHP

Half the web's backend

Rasmus's 1994 personal-homepage script, 30 years later still powering ~40% of websites via WordPress plus Wikipedia. PHP 7 doubled perf, PHP 8 added a JIT — from "fractal of bad design" to mature platform

→
Lu

Lua

King of embedded languages

Born 1993 at PUC-Rio in Brazil. 200KB interpreter, zero dependencies. WoW / Roblox / Neovim / Redis / Nginx all run on it; Mike Pall's LuaJIT, written single-handed, rivals V8

→
Hs

Haskell

Native tongue of pure FP

1987 Portland committee. The wellspring of monads, type classes and lazy evaluation. Rust traits, Swift protocols, and TS HKT debates all owe Haskell a debt

→
Wa

WebAssembly

A universal bytecode for the web

W3C four-vendor effort from 2015; MVP shipped by all four browsers in 2017; Component Model 1.0 in 2025. Figma, Photoshop on the Web, Cloudflare Workers all run on it

→
// Markup / typesetting / script / query

Not programming languages — but unavoidable

HTML / CSS are declarative markup and styling; LaTeX / KaTeX are typesetting; Bash and SQL are scripting and query. Daily tools, rarely on the "programming language" list

Ht

HTML

Skeleton of the web

Tim Berners-Lee shipped the first website at CERN in 1991. 35 years of XHTML detours, WHATWG vs W3C, HTML5 becoming a Living Standard, and recent years quietly re-absorbing JS surface area

→
Cs

CSS

Styling language of the web

Håkon Wium Lie's 1996 proposal. From the IE6 dark age to Grid in 2017 and :has() / container queries in 2023. CSS-in-JS receded — "the platform caught up"

→
TeX

LaTeX

De-facto standard for math typesetting

Knuth wrote TeX in 1978; Leslie Lamport wrapped it as LaTeX at SRI in 1985. Forty years on it is the native tongue of arXiv and most physics / math / CS papers, with LaTeX3 still maturing in 2026

→
KX

KaTeX

LaTeX math in the browser, 100× MathJax speed

Released by Khan Academy in 2013 (Emily Eisenberg + Sophie Alpert). Sync render, ~1ms per equation. By 2026 the default math renderer on GitHub, Notion, Obsidian and Discourse

→
$_

Bash

Glue of ops

Brian Fox's 1989 GNU "Bourne again". 35 years on, still the default of CI runners, Dockerfiles and bootstrap scripts. Everyone hates it; everyone writes it

→
>_

PowerShell

Object pipeline · Windows default

Jeffrey Snover shipped it at Microsoft in 2006, off the back of the 2002 Monad Manifesto. Pipes carry .NET objects, not text. MIT open-sourced and cross-platform in 2016; pwsh 7.5 on .NET 9 in 2025

→
Sq

SQL

Lingua franca of data

Codd's 1970 relational model, IBM System R's 1974 SEQUEL design. 50+ years through the NoSQL wave and back — DuckDB, ClickHouse and distributed SQL all surging by 2026

→
More languages coming·CubeRoot