Chapel programming language
Shares rank 149 of 163 programming languages by recommenders
Free, open-source parallel language used in high-performance computing research; critics say it copies OpenMP and targets mainly HPC users.
Free, open-source parallel language used in high-performance computing research; critics say it copies OpenMP and targets mainly HPC users.
7 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 5
- criticize it
- 2
- approval share
- 71%
Recommended in 4 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 5 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 2.5 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 4 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Used in HPC research and production
“used in production already by key laboratories in HPC research”
Comment from 8 May 2026 in “Mojo 1.0 Beta” “plenty of people are using it in HPC, and is open source”
Comment from 8 May 2026 in “Mojo 1.0 Beta” Small, fast niche alongside Julia
“shows Julia (and Chapel) in the ideal small-but-fast corner”
Comment from 14 Sep 2026 on Hacker News “I would argue Chapel or Futhark could be such languages”
Comment from 8 May 2026 in “Mojo 1.0 Beta”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Narrow HPC focus, too low level
“it is too low level to attract a large public outside of the HPC community”
Comment from 8 May 2026 in “Mojo 1.0 Beta” “they only focus on HPC as userbase”
Comment from 23 Jul 2026 in “Everyone Should Know SIMD” Parallel features copy OpenMP
“Some of the parallelization features seem like they just copied OpenMP without meaningfully improving on it.”
Comment from 17 Apr 2026 in “30 Years of HPC: many hardware advances, little adoption of new languages”
Other programming languages people recommend
The four most recommended other programming languages, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
See all 163 programming languages, rankedWhat people said
All 10 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“shows Julia (and Chapel) in the ideal small-but-fast corner”
“they only focus on HPC as userbase”
“I just checked out Chapel because of this comment and it is very high up there among the coolest things I've seen this whole entire year.”
“it is too low level to attract a large public outside of the HPC community”
“I would argue Chapel or Futhark could be such languages”
“used in production already by key laboratories in HPC research”
“plenty of people are using it in HPC, and is open source”
“Chapel's tasks are also arguably more general-purpose (akin to threads)”
“Some of the parallelization features seem like they just copied OpenMP without meaningfully improving on it.”
“Those languages were not effective in practice.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.