List of C-family programming languages


Due to the success of the C programming language and some of its derivatives, C-family programming languages span a large variety of programming paradigms, conceptual models, and run-time environments.
LanguageYear startedCreated by CommentsReferences
E1997Mark S. Miller, Dan Bornstein Designed with secure computing in mind, accomplished chiefly by strict adherence to the object-oriented computing model.
C1969-1973Dennis Ritchie Was an enhancement of Ken Thompson's B language.
Ratfor1974Brian Kernighan A hybrid of C and Fortran, implemented as a preprocessor for environments without easy access to C compilers.
C shell/tcsh1978Bill Joy Scripting language and standard Unix shell.
C++1979Bjarne Stroustrup Named as "C with Classes" and renamed C++ in 1983; it began as a reimplementation of static object orientation in the tradition of Simula 67, and through standardization and wide use has grown to encompass generic programming as well as its original object-oriented roots.
AMPL1985Robert Fourer, David Gay and Brian Kernighan It is an algebraic modeling language with elements of a scripting language.
Objective-C1986Brad Cox and Tom LoveIt is an object-oriented dynamic language based heavily on Smalltalk. A loosely defined de facto standard library by the original developers has now largely been displaced by variations on the OpenStep FoundationKit.
C*1987Thinking Machinesobject-oriented, data-parallel superset of ANSI C
Perl1988Larry WallScripting language used extensively for system administration, text processing, and web server tasks.
Java1991James Gosling Created as Oak, and released to the public in 1995. It is an OODL based inspired heavily by Objective-C, though with a syntax based somewhat on C++. It also compiles to its own bytecode, a standard part of the language specification. It is strongly typed, a feature that is enforced by the VM.
S-Lang1991John E. DavisA library with a powerful interpreter that provides facilities required by interactive applications such as display/screen management, keyboard input, keymaps, etc.
SAC1994Development spread to several institutions in Germany, Canada, and the UK. Functional language with C syntax.
Alef1995Phil Winterbottom Created for systems programming on the Plan 9 from Bell Labs operating system; it was published in 1995 but eventually abandoned. It provided substantial language support for concurrent programming.
Limbo1995Limbo succeeded Alef and is used in Inferno as Alef was used in Plan9.
PHP1995Rasmus LerdorfWidely used as a server-side HTML scripting language. C-like syntax.
ECMAScript1995Brendan Eich Created as Mocha and LiveScript, announced in 1995, shipped the next year as JavaScript. Primarily a scripting language used in Web page development as well as numerous application environments such as Adobe Flash and QtScript. Though initially based on Scheme and Self, it is primarily a prototype-based object-oriented language with a syntax based on Java
C--1997Simon Peyton Jones, Norman Ramseygenerated mainly by compilers for very high-level languages
C#1999Anders Hejlsberg Created under the name "Cool", it is syntactically very similar to Java, though with a Smalltalk-like unified type system.
Ch2001Harry ChengA C/C++ scripting language with extensions for shell programming and numerical computing.
D2001Walter Bright Based on C++, but with an incompatible syntax having traits from other C-like languages like Java and C#.
eC2004Jérôme Jacovella-St-Louis A super-set of C adding object-oriented features, properties, dynamic modules and reflection developed as part of the Ecere SDK project, an open-source cross-platform SDK.
Cyclone2001Greg Morrisett Intended to be a safe dialect of the C language. It is designed to avoid buffer overflows and other vulnerabilities that are endemic in C programs, without losing the power and convenience of C as a tool for system programming.
LSL2003?Created for the Second Life virtual world by Linden Lab.
Squirrel2003Alberto DemichelisA light-weight scripting language
Go2007Rob Pike, Ken Thompson, and Robert Griesemer Released to public in 2009, it is a concurrent language with fast compilations, Java-like syntax, but no object-oriented features and strong typing.
OpenCL C2009Apple, Khronos GroupOpenCL specifies a modified subset of the C programming language for writing programs to run on various compute devices
C02010Rob Arnold A safe subset of C with checked pointers and bounds-checked arrays. Created for CMU introductory computer courses.
Swift2014Chris Lattner Swift can import any C library, optionally annotating C headers to map C types to Swift objects and import libraries as Swift modules. Swift has two-way bridging with Objective-C on platforms which support Apple's Objective-C runtime. Unlike Objective-C, Swift does not currently support C++ interoperation or exposing Swift types as C structs.
AWK1977Alfred Aho, Peter Weinberger & Brian Kernighan Designed for text processing and typically used as a data extraction and reporting tool.
BitC2006Johns Hopkins UniversityAims to support formal program verification.
LPC1995Lars PensjöDeveloped originally to facilitate MUD building on LPMuds. Though designed for game development, its flexibility has led to it being used for a variety of purposes.
Pike1994Fredrik HübinetteAn interpreted, general-purpose, high-level, cross-platform, dynamic programming language, with a syntax similar to that of C.
Seed72005Thomas MertesAn extensible general-purpose programming language.
Processing2001Casey Reas, Benjamin FryAn open source programming language and integrated development environment built for the electronic arts, new media art, and visual design communities.
Split-C1993?A parallel extension of the C programming language.
Unified Parallel C2003?An extension of the C programming language designed for high-performance computing on large-scale parallel machines.
Cilk1994MIT Laboratory for Computer ScienceGeneral-purpose programming language designed for multithreaded parallel computing.
Chapel2009Cray Inc.Aims to improve the programmability of parallel computers in general and the Cray Cascade system in particular.
Fortress2006Sun LabsAn experimental programming language for high-performance computing, created by Sun Microsystems with funding from DARPA's High Productivity Computing Systems project.
Agora1993?A reflective, prototype-based, object-oriented programming language that is based exclusively on message passing and not delegation.
BCPL1966Martin RichardsA procedural, imperative, and structured computer programming language.
B1969Ken ThompsonDesigned for recursive, non-numeric, machine independent applications, such as system and language software.
Nim2008Andreas RumpfAn imperative, multi-paradigm, compiled programming language.
Nemerle2003Andreas RumpfA general-purpose high-level statically typed programming language designed for platforms using the Common Language Infrastructure.
ApeScript??An interpreted procedural dynamic-typed language.
Amiga E1993Wouter van OortmerssenA combination of many features from a number of languages, but follows the original C programming language most closely in terms of basic concepts.
Lite-C2007Atari IncA programming language for multimedia applications and personal computer games, using a syntax subset of the C language with some elements of the C++ language.
Newsqueakearly 1980sRob PikeA concurrent programming language for writing application software with interactive graphical user interfaces. Newsqueak's syntax and semantics are influenced by the C language, but its approach to concurrency was inspired by CSP.
Not eXactly C 2006John HansenA high-level programming language for the Lego Mindstorms NXT. NXC, which is short for Not eXactly C, is based on Next Byte Codes, an assembly language. NXC has a syntax like C. It is part of the BricX IDE that integrates editor, tools for interfacing with the brick, and the compiler, but supports more languages.
Not Quite C ~1998David BaumAn embedded systems programming language, application programming interface, and native bytecode compiler toolkit for the Lego Mindstorms RCX platform, Cybermaster and LEGO Spybotics systems. It is intended as a drop-in replacement for the LabVIEW-based ROBOLAB IDE. It is based primarily on the C language but has specific limitations, such as the maximum number of subroutines and variables allowed. Later replaced with NXC, an enhanced version created for the Mindstorms NXT platform.
Oak1991James Gosling A programming language created initially for Sun Microsystems set-top box project. The language later evolved to become Java.
PROMAL1985Systems Management AssociatesA C-like programming language for MS-DOS, Commodore 64, and Apple II.
Handel-C1996Oxford University Computing LaboratoryA high-level programming language which targets low-level hardware, most commonly used in the programming of FPGAs. It is a rich subset of C.
Dart2013Lars Bak and Kasper Lund A class-based, single inheritance, object-oriented language with C-style syntax.
CINT1997-1999?Masaharu GotoAn interpreted version of C/C++, much in the way BeanShell is an interpreted version of Java.
Cg2002NvidiaBased on the C programming language and although they share the same syntax, some features of C were modified and new data types were added to make Cg more suitable for programming graphics processing units. This language is only suitable for GPU programming and is not a general programming language.
R1993Ross Ihaka and Robert GentlemanA programming language and software environment for statistical computing and graphics.
Hack2014Julien Verlaguet, Alok Menghrajani, Drew Paroski A programming language for the HipHop Virtual Machine.
Charm1996?An object oriented computer programming language with similarities to the RTL/2, Pascal and C languages in addition to containing some unique features of its own.
Claire1994Yves CaseauA high-level functional and object-oriented programming language with rule processing abilities.
Noop2009GoogleAttempts to blend the best features of "old" and "new" languages, while syntactically encouraging good programming practice.
Neko2005Nicolas Cannasse A high-level dynamically typed programming language
Axum2009MicrosoftA domain specific concurrent programming language, based on the Actor model.
Rust2010Graydon Hoare A language empowering everyone to build reliable and efficient software.
TypeScript2012MicrosoftSuperset of JavaScript.
Umple2008University of OttawaA language for both object-oriented programming and modeling with class diagrams and state diagrams.
TOM 1990s?An object-oriented programming language that built on the lessons learned from Objective-C.
Telescript1990Marc PoratAn object-oriented programming language.
Fantom2005Brian Frank and Andy FrankAn object-oriented, functional, actor concurrent with a null-able aware type system emphasizing pragmatism in building enterprise systems running on top of the JVM or the CLR or JavaScript.
nesCnesC is an extension to the C programming language designed to embody the structuring concepts and execution model of TinyOS. TinyOS is an event-driven operating system designed for sensor network nodes that have very limited resources.
HolyC2005Terry A. DavisA dialect of C for Terry's own operating system TempleOS. Most notable changes are the argument passing, variable type naming, code structure, switch statement structure and substitution of some parts of the preprocessor like the removal of #define and the use of '$' as the escape character.