Since the development of Plankalkül back in the 1940s, a large number of programming languages have been designed and implemented - each for its own specific problem domains and made with its own set of design decisions and compromises. For example, there are languages which:
Are strongly typed and loosely typed,
Provide support for object orientation / abstraction of data types,
 Use static or dynamic scoping rules,
 Provide memory management (i.e. garbage collection) or allow the developer fine-grained control over heap-allocation and recycling,
 Provide closures to allow functions to be passed around like variables,
 Allow easy access to array slices and those which do not,
 Perform internal correctness checking of data and those which do not,
 Provide diverse and comprehensive suites of built-in functionality and those with a more limited set of features,
 Use pre-processors and macros to selectively expand or substitute source code, etc.
Each of these decisions can have a profound effect on the usefulness of a programming language in terms of factors such as its speed, robustness and general suitability to create programs of a certain type, such as for operating systems, or in the areas of business, scientific computation, artificial intelligence or video games.

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