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I see that for such a widely used term I cannot find any definition or dedicated wikipedia article. I also use the term but I'm not sure whether I use it correctly in all cases.

By looking at sites that describe language features (e.g. http://es6-features.org) I can have a sense of what they are, but without specific bounds.

I also see that features are usually categorized (like in the above site). But again I cannot find any site mentioning about categorization of programming language features.

Marinos An
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  • Let's put it this way. This is a 'feature', **Object\`foo\` instanceof Array === true**. And this is a 'bug', **typeof null === 'object'**. – Estus Flask May 10 '17 at 12:55

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The word feature for programming languages is used with the meaning of characteristic or attribute, so there doesn't need to be a specific definition. See the word's definition through Google.

fea·ture

noun: feature; plural noun: features

  1. a distinctive attribute or aspect of something. "safety features like dual air bags" synonyms: characteristic, attribute, quality, property, trait, hallmark, trademark;

    • a part of the face, such as the mouth or eyes, making a significant contribution to its overall appearance. synonyms: face, countenance, physiognomy;

    • LINGUISTICS a distinctive characteristic of a linguistic unit, especially a speech sound or vocabulary item, that serves to distinguish it from others of the same type.

Apalala
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  • But shouldn't the definition at least include the types of features or some kind of grouping? I think distinctive attributes like: Simple, Distributed, Object-Oriented, closures, duck-typing support, strongly-typed, Multiple inheritance, Generators, Currying, Compound types are too irrelevant to each other to be referenced by the same term. I think clustering them under more specific groups (terms), would provide a deeper understanding of what they actually are. – Marinos An May 15 '17 at 13:05