Lightweight programming languages are designed to have small memory footprint, are easy to implement (important when porting a language to different computer systems), and/or have minimalist syntax and features. [1]
These programming languages have simple syntax and semantics, so one can learn them quickly and easily. Some lightweight languages (for example Lisp, Forth, and Tcl) are so simple to implement that they have many implementations (dialects). [2]
BASIC implementations like Tiny BASIC were designed to be lightweight so that they could run on the microcomputers of the 1980s, because of memory constraints.
Forth is a stack-based concatenative imperative programming language using reverse polish notation.
FALSE is a minimalist esoteric programming language, with a complete implementation done in 1024 bytes.
Brainfuck is an extremely minimalist esoteric programming language.
FlipJump is a minimalistic One-instruction set computer. [3]
Io is a prototype-based object-oriented scripting language.
Lisp-like languages are very simple to implement, so there are many lightweight implementations of it.
There are some notable implementations:
Derivatives of Lisp:
Tcl-like languages can be easily implemented because of its simple syntax. Tcl itself maybe not so lightweight, but there exists some, if not many, lightweight implementations of languages which have Tcl-like syntax. [4] [5] [6]
Ring is a lightweight multi-paradigm scripting language. [7]
There are many embeddable implementation of ECMAScript like:
Derivatives of ECMAScript:
Lua is a small (C source is approx. 300 kB tarball, as of version 5.3.5), portable and embeddable scripting language (with LuaJIT as a JIT compiler improving speed). It can be embedded in applications such as computer games to provide runtime scripting capabilities. [8]
Wren is a small, fast, object-oriented scripting language. [9]
A "Hello, World!" program is generally a simple computer program that emits to the screen a message similar to "Hello, World!". A small piece of code in most general-purpose programming languages, this program is used to illustrate a language's basic syntax. A "Hello, World!" program is often the first written by a student of a new programming language, but such a program can also be used as a sanity check to ensure that the computer software intended to compile or run source code is correctly installed, and that its operator understands how to use it.
Lua is a lightweight, high-level, multi-paradigm programming language designed mainly for embedded use in applications. Lua is cross-platform software, since the interpreter of compiled bytecode is written in ANSI C, and Lua has a relatively simple C application programming interface (API) to embed it into applications.
In computer science, an interpreter is a computer program that directly executes instructions written in a programming or scripting language, without requiring them previously to have been compiled into a machine language program. An interpreter generally uses one of the following strategies for program execution:
Prototype-based programming is a style of object-oriented programming in which behavior reuse is performed via a process of reusing existing objects that serve as prototypes. This model can also be known as prototypal, prototype-oriented,classless, or instance-based programming.
In computer science, a preprocessor is a program that processes its input data to produce output that is used as input in another program. The output is said to be a preprocessed form of the input data, which is often used by some subsequent programs like compilers. The amount and kind of processing done depends on the nature of the preprocessor; some preprocessors are only capable of performing relatively simple textual substitutions and macro expansions, while others have the power of full-fledged programming languages.
Bytecode is a form of instruction set designed for efficient execution by a software interpreter. Unlike human-readable source code, bytecodes are compact numeric codes, constants, and references that encode the result of compiler parsing and performing semantic analysis of things like type, scope, and nesting depths of program objects.
This is a "genealogy" of programming languages. Languages are categorized under the ancestor language with the strongest influence. Those ancestor languages are listed in alphabetic order. Any such categorization has a large arbitrary element, since programming languages often incorporate major ideas from multiple sources.
Metaprogramming is a computer programming technique in which computer programs have the ability to treat other programs as their data. It means that a program can be designed to read, generate, analyse, or transform other programs, and even modify itself, while running. In some cases, this allows programmers to minimize the number of lines of code to express a solution, in turn reducing development time. It also allows programs more flexibility to efficiently handle new situations with no recompiling.
In computer science, conditionals are programming language constructs that perform different computations or actions or return different values depending on the value of a Boolean expression, called a condition.
GNU Ubiquitous Intelligent Language for Extensions is the preferred extension language system for the GNU Project and features an implementation of the programming language Scheme. Its first version was released in 1993. In addition to large parts of Scheme standards, Guile Scheme includes modularized extensions for many different programming tasks.
Programming languages are used for controlling the behavior of a machine. Like natural languages, programming languages follow rules for syntax and semantics.
A foreign function interface (FFI) is a mechanism by which a program written in one programming language can call routines or make use of services written or compiled in another one. An FFI is often used in contexts where calls are made into a binary dynamic-link library.
In computing, a script is a relatively short and simple set of instructions that typically automate an otherwise manual process. The act of writing a script is called scripting. Scripting language or script language describes a programming language that is used for scripting.
Mustache is a web template system. It is described as a logic-less system because it lacks any explicit control flow statements, like if
and else
conditionals or for loops; however, both looping and conditional evaluation can be achieved using section tags processing lists and anonymous functions (lambdas). It is named "Mustache" because of heavy use of braces, { }
, that resemble a sideways moustache. Mustache is used mainly for mobile and web applications.