Note1: Although there are other programming languages that have been written for, or ported to, DOS; those offered here are ones that are, performance wise, better suited to the DOS OS.
If undecided on a compiled language, try Assembly. Alternatively consider Cobol (avoid Pascal, due to its inherent inefficiency).

Note2: A generic Linker (a program that combines separate compiled objects with an *.OBJ extension into one *.EXE executable file) was bundled with MS-DOS ver 3.30.
If there is an equal option of compiling the program in a *.COM or *.EXE format, *.COM will give the better performance.

Assembly

NASM (ver 2.16.01) - Freeware

Compiled BASIC

MoonRock (ver 0.50) - Abandoned Freeware

'BAT' file to 'COM' file compiler

BAT2EXEC (ver 1.5) - Abandoned Freeware
~ XDOC (ver 1.27)

~ [XDOC .zip]

C - -

Sphinx C-- (ver 0.203) - Abandoned Freeware

Cobol

COBOL651 (ver 6.51) - Abandoned Freeware

Fortran

OpenWatcom FORTRAN 77 (ver 1.90) - Commercial made Abandoned Freeware - {unsetup}

Pascal

Turbo Pascal (ver 3.02) - Commercial made Abandoned Freeware

Prolog

Turbo Prolog (ver 1.1) - Abandonware

Text Adventure Authoring

Adventure Game Toolkit (ver 1.7 patched) - Abandoned Freeware

XPL

XPLPX (ver 3.4.0) - Abandoned Freeware

PROGRAMMERS - DOS desperately needs the following 32-bit software:

= USB Keyboard and Mouse drivers
= Movie DVD (ideally Blue Ray also) disk player
= WATTCP DICT protocol client
= Modern high quality PDF file combining/dividing utility
= Audio CD Ripper to WAV file
= Graphical WAV file Audio Editor capable of saving as both a WAV and a high quality MP3 file
= WATTCP HTTPS address Streaming Audio player
= Modern high quality PDF file Viewer with high quality Color Laser Printing capability
= Movie DVD (ideally Blue Ray also) Ripper to 720 HD MP4 file
= Graphical MP4 file Video Editor capable of saving as a 720 HD MP4 file
= WATTCP Youtube HTTPS address 720 HD Streaming Video player
= Modern Sound Chip drivers
= Modern Graphics Card drivers
= Modern Wireless Network Card drivers
= USB Webcam and Scanner drivers
= WATTCP modern HTTPS Browser with image, video, Javascript, and CSS rendering capability
= Configurable Internet Firewall