A very biased list of compiled programming languages that I consider to be the best.
There are some question marks because I'm not sure about that criteria for that particular language. I haven't tried Odin or DLang yet. Here is a very biased comparison table:
| Criteria | C | C++ | Golang | Rust | Zig | Odin | Nim | Crystal | Vlang | Dlang |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Compiled | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Multiplatform | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Small compiler | tcc ~620KB | ~200MB g++ | 142MB | 414.1 MB | 42.3MB tar.xz | 44 MB zip | 11.4MB tar.xz | ~40MB tar.gz | 6.6MB zip (uses tcc) | ~50MB tar.xz |
| Compiler speed | Fast | Slow | Fast | Slow | Medium | ??? | Medium | ??? | Fast (uses tcc) | ??? |
| Maturity | High | High | High | High | Medium | ??? | High? | High? | Medium | High? |
| Binary size | Small | Small | Medium | Small | Small | ??? | Medium/Low? | Medium | Small | Small? |
| System libraries dependencies | Low | Low | Low | Low | Low, small std lib | ??? | OpenSSL | OpenSSL | OpenSSL or MbedTLS | Libcurl |
| Manual Memory management | Yes | Yes | Yes, but good GC | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes, stdlib needs GC | ??? | Buggy | Yes, stdlib needs GC |
| Syntax Modernity | Low | Medium | Medium | Medium | Medium | High | High | High | Medium | Medium? |
| Syntax Familiarity | C (easy, macros make it hard) | C-like (medium?, templates can be hard) | C-like (easy) | C-like (steep learning curve) | C-like (medium learning curve) | C-like (easy?) | Python-Pascal-like? (easy?) | Ruby-like (medium?) | Go-like (easy) | C-like (easy?) |