Owing to the fast growing need for better means of building real-time systems, a number of representative languages used in real-time programming is surveyed. The evaluation focuses on seven languages which possess explicit real-time features. Based on a categorization of the latter, the seven languages are then compared with respect to their real-time capabilities. The strong points and the limitations of Ada and PEARL, the only high-level real-time languages readily applicable in industrial control environments, are covered in more detail. The evaluation reveals that none of the languages actually used in industry is genuinely real-time. Therefore, a number of new features is suggested for incorporation into existing or future languages and their run-time environments. These proposals are meant to advance the inadequate state of affairs, and also to reignite the discussion of this topic in the real-time community.