Much less widely used were specialized languages such as IPL-V and LISP for symbolic list processing; COMIT for string manipulation; APT for numerically controlled machines.
Systems programming requiring pointer manipulation was typically done in assembly language, though JOVIAL was used for some military applications.
[dubious – discuss] Inversely, a language may be designed for general use but only applied in a specific area in practice.
[6] General Purpose programming languages are all Turing complete, meaning that they can theoretically solve any computational problem.
[4] An empirical study in 2010 sought to measure problem-solving and productivity between GPLs and DSLs by giving users problems who were familiar with the GPL (C#) and unfamiliar with the DSL (XAML).
Ultimately, users of this specific domain-specific language performed better by a factor of 15%, even though they were more familiar with GPL, warranting further research.
It provides economy of expression, flow control, data structures, and a rich set of operators, but does not constrain its users to use it in any one context.
[11] Conceived as an extension to C, C++ introduced object-oriented features, as well as other conveniences like references, operator overloading, and default arguments.
[13] Major software and finance companies, such as Microsoft, Apple, Bloomberg, and Morgan Stanley, still widely use C++ in their internal and external applications.