Comparison of Programming Languages

This is a comparison of the features and instructions of the three high-level programming languages offered by Unity: JavaScript, C#, and Boo.

Conventions of This Article

The bold is the literal code. The non-bold is interpreted by the reader. Statements in guillemets (« … ») are optional. tab indicates a necessary indent.

The following tables compare code differences of the Unity programming languages. See also the Comparison of Programming Languages for general information.

Features

The following tables compares major features of the Unity programming languages.

Language	Boo	C#	UnityScript/JavaScript
Paradigm(s)	object-oriented  ?	imperative object-oriented functional generic reflective	imperative object-oriented functional reflective
Standardized Variation?	Yes	Yes, ECMA, ISO ECMA-334; ISO/IEC 23270:2006	No
Type Strength	strong	strong	weak
Type Safety	safe	safe
Expression of Types	implicit with optional explicit typing	explicit	implicit
Compatibility Among Composite Types		name-based
Type Checking	static with optional dynamic typing	static with optional dynamic typing	dynamic with optional static typing	} Type Identifiers Integer Language Boo C# UnityScript/JavaScript 8 bit (byte) Signed sbyte N/A 8 bit (byte) Unsigned byte byte N/A 16 bit (short integer) Signed short short N/A 16 bit (short integer) Unsigned ushort N/A 32 bit Signed int int N/A 32 bit Unsigned uint N/A 64 bit (long integer) Signed long long N/A 64 bit long integer) Unsigned ulong N/A Floating Point Language Boo C# UnityScript/JavaScript Single Precision single float N/A Double Precision double double Number Arbitrarily Precise (bignum) decimal Other Types Language Boo C# UnityScript/JavaScript Text Character N/A char N/A Text String string string String Boolean) bool bool Boolean Object/Universal) object object Object Derived Types Array Language Boo C# UnityScript/JavaScript one-dimensional fixed size array (type) type[size] type[] multi-dimensional fixed size array type[size1, size2,...] one-dimensional dynamic size array List System.Collections.ArrayList or System.Collections.Generic.List<type> Array multi-dimensional dynamic size array Other Types Language Boo C# UnityScript/JavaScript Record Simple Composite Types struct name {type name;...} Enumeration Simple Composite Types enum condition: tab item1 tab «item2 tab …» Basic Unity-Specific Types Language Boo C# UnityScript/JavaScript Declarations Language Boo C# UnityScript/JavaScript Flow Control Conditional Statements Language Boo C# UnityScript/JavaScript Loop Statements Language Boo C# UnityScript/JavaScript Exceptions Language Boo C# UnityScript/JavaScript Other Flow Control Statements Language Boo C# UnityScript/JavaScript Functions Language Boo C# UnityScript/JavaScript Type Conversions Language Boo C# UnityScript/JavaScript Programming Index