The Contents of an Entry
Any material marked with brackets "[ ]" is doubtful and may be considered a request for further information.
Editorial Comments -
What constitutes a good language has often become the subject of intense debate. We've tried to sidestep this issue by avoiding any subjective remarks, such as calling a language "powerful". Nevertheless some comments might still be construed this way. For instance saying that Pascal is "ALGOL-like" could offend both some ALGOL and some Pascal users. Also, some questions of historical origin are not universally agreed upon.Classification -
It's been suggested that the languages in this list should be arranged into categories, but to do so would be extremely difficult. For every classification scheme there wlll be a large proportion of languages that do not fit. The languages are therefore listed alphabetically, and in fact we think that this is the most useful organization. You'll find that certain categories have been referred to in the list, but we must emphasize that most languages are not purely one or the other, and we are really categorizing language features.