Choosing a programming language

This paper evaluates the use of a functional language for implementing domain-specific functionality. The factors we consider when choosing a programming language are programmer productivity, maintainability, efficiency, portability, tool support, and software and hardware interfaces. The choice of programming language is a fine balancing act. Modern object-oriented languages such as Java and C# are more orthogonal and hide fewer surprises for the programmer, although the inevitable accumulation of features makes this statement less true with every new version of each language.