Common Lisp vs. Component Pascal vs. Java vs. Unlambda Comparison Chart

Component Pascal is a general-purpose language in the tradition of Pascal, Modula-2, and Oberon. Its most important features are block structure, modularity, separate compilation, static typing with strong type checking (also across module boundaries), type extension with methods, dynamic loading of modules, and garbage collection. Type extension makes Component Pascal an object-oriented language. An object is a variable of an abstract data type consisting of private data (its state) and procedures that operate on this data. Abstract data types are declared as extensible records. Component Pascal covers most terms of object-oriented languages by the established vocabulary of imperative languages in order to minimize the number of notions for similar concepts. Complete type safety and the requirement of a dynamic object model make Component Pascal a component-oriented language.

Unlambda is a programming language. Nothing remarkable there. The originality of Unlambda is that it stands as the unexpected intersection of two marginal families of languages. Functional programming languages, of which the canonical representative is Scheme (a Lisp dialect). This means that the basic object manipulated by the language (and indeed the only one as far as Unlambda is concerned) is the function. Rather, Unlambda uses a functional approach to programming: the only form of objects it manipulates are functions. Each function takes a function as an argument and returns a function. Apart from a binary “apply” operation, Unlambda provides several built-in functions (the most important ones being the K and S combinators). User-defined functions can be created, but not saved or named, because Unlambda does not have any variables.