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  5. COBOL vs Haskell

COBOL vs Haskell

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Haskell
Haskell
Stacks1.4K
Followers1.2K
Votes527
COBOL
COBOL
Stacks130
Followers147
Votes2

COBOL vs Haskell: What are the differences?

Introduction

COBOL

  • COBOL stands for Common Business Oriented Language and is a high-level programming language primarily used in the business sector.
  • It was created in the late 1950s and is known for its readability and ease of use.

Haskell

  • Haskell is a functional programming language that was developed in the late 1980s.
  • It is purely functional, which means that it focuses on computations without side effects.
  • Haskell is known for its strong type system and the ability to create concise and elegant code.

Key Differences between COBOL and Haskell

  1. Data Types: COBOL has a limited set of data types, such as numbers, characters, and strings. In contrast, Haskell has a rich and expressive type system that includes algebraic data types and allows for the creation of custom types. Haskell's type system helps catch errors at compile time and promotes safe programming practices.
  2. Imperative vs Functional Programming: COBOL is an imperative programming language, which means that programs are written as a sequence of statements that change the program state. In contrast, Haskell is a purely functional language that emphasizes writing programs as a series of function evaluations without any state changes. This difference in programming paradigms affects the way programs are structured and written in each language.
  3. Control Flow: COBOL uses control structures such as IF-ELSE statements and GOTO statements to control the flow of execution. Haskell, on the other hand, relies on pattern matching, recursion, and higher-order functions to control program flow. This difference in control flow mechanisms affects the programming style and can lead to different code structures.
  4. Error Handling: COBOL focuses on error handling through the use of error codes and condition checks. In contrast, Haskell promotes a type-safe approach to error handling using monads and type systems features such as Maybe and Either. This allows for more fine-grained control over possible errors and can lead to more robust and maintainable code.
  5. Legacy vs Modern: COBOL is a legacy language that has been used in business applications for many decades. As a result, there is a large amount of existing COBOL code and a wide range of COBOL-based systems still in use. Haskell, on the other hand, is a more modern language that is not as widely adopted in industry. This difference in adoption and industry support can impact the availability of resources and job opportunities for developers.
  6. Community and Ecosystem: COBOL has a smaller and more specialized community compared to Haskell. The COBOL community consists mainly of business professionals and legacy system maintainers. Haskell, on the other hand, has a vibrant and active community of functional programming enthusiasts and researchers. This difference in community size and involvement can impact the availability of libraries, frameworks, and support for the respective languages.

In Summary, COBOL is a business-oriented language with a limited type system and imperative programming style, while Haskell is a functional programming language with a rich and expressive type system and a focus on purely functional programming. COBOL is a legacy language with a wide industry adoption, while Haskell is a more modern language with a smaller but highly engaged community.

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Advice on Haskell, COBOL

Timm
Timm

VP Of Engineering at Flexperto GmbH

Nov 10, 2020

Decided

We have a lot of experience in JavaScript, writing our services in NodeJS allows developers to transition to the back end without any friction, without having to learn a new language. There is also the option to write services in TypeScript, which adds an expressive type layer. The semi-shared ecosystem between front and back end is nice as well, though specifically NodeJS libraries sometimes suffer in quality, compared to other major languages.

As for why we didn't pick the other languages, most of it comes down to "personal preference" and historically grown code bases, but let's do some post-hoc deduction:

Go is a practical choice, reasonably easy to learn, but until we find performance issues with our NodeJS stack, there is simply no reason to switch. The benefits of using NodeJS so far outweigh those of picking Go. This might change in the future.

PHP is a language we're still using in big parts of our system, and are still sometimes writing new code in. Modern PHP has fixed some of its issues, and probably has the fastest development cycle time, but it suffers around modelling complex asynchronous tasks, and (on a personal note) lack of support for writing in a functional style.

We don't use Python, Elixir or Ruby, mostly because of personal preference and for historic reasons.

Rust, though I personally love and use it in my projects, would require us to specifically hire for that, as the learning curve is quite steep. Its web ecosystem is OK by now (see https://www.arewewebyet.org/), but in my opinion, it is still no where near that of the other web languages. In other words, we are not willing to pay the price for playing this innovation card.

Haskell, as with Rust, I personally adore, but is simply too esoteric for us. There are problem domains where it shines, ours is not one of them.

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Comments

Detailed Comparison

Haskell
Haskell
COBOL
COBOL

It is a general purpose language that can be used in any domain and use case, it is ideally suited for proprietary business logic and data analysis, fast prototyping and enhancing existing software environments with correct code, performance and scalability.

COBOL was one of the first programming languages to be standardised: the first COBOL standard was issued by ANSI in 1968. COBOL is primarily used in business, finance, and administrative systems for companies and governments.

Statically typed; Purely functional; Type inference; Concurrent
-
Statistics
Stacks
1.4K
Stacks
130
Followers
1.2K
Followers
147
Votes
527
Votes
2
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 90
    Purely-functional programming
  • 66
    Statically typed
  • 59
    Type-safe
  • 39
    Open source
  • 38
    Great community
Cons
  • 9
    Too much distraction in language extensions
  • 8
    Error messages can be very confusing
  • 5
    Libraries have poor documentation
  • 3
    No best practices
  • 3
    No good ABI
Pros
  • 2
    Business Oriented Language
Cons
  • 2
    Extremely long code for simple functions

What are some alternatives to Haskell, COBOL?

JavaScript

JavaScript

JavaScript is most known as the scripting language for Web pages, but used in many non-browser environments as well such as node.js or Apache CouchDB. It is a prototype-based, multi-paradigm scripting language that is dynamic,and supports object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles.

Python

Python

Python is a general purpose programming language created by Guido Van Rossum. Python is most praised for its elegant syntax and readable code, if you are just beginning your programming career python suits you best.

PHP

PHP

Fast, flexible and pragmatic, PHP powers everything from your blog to the most popular websites in the world.

Ruby

Ruby

Ruby is a language of careful balance. Its creator, Yukihiro “Matz” Matsumoto, blended parts of his favorite languages (Perl, Smalltalk, Eiffel, Ada, and Lisp) to form a new language that balanced functional programming with imperative programming.

Java

Java

Java is a programming language and computing platform first released by Sun Microsystems in 1995. There are lots of applications and websites that will not work unless you have Java installed, and more are created every day. Java is fast, secure, and reliable. From laptops to datacenters, game consoles to scientific supercomputers, cell phones to the Internet, Java is everywhere!

Golang

Golang

Go is expressive, concise, clean, and efficient. Its concurrency mechanisms make it easy to write programs that get the most out of multicore and networked machines, while its novel type system enables flexible and modular program construction. Go compiles quickly to machine code yet has the convenience of garbage collection and the power of run-time reflection. It's a fast, statically typed, compiled language that feels like a dynamically typed, interpreted language.

HTML5

HTML5

HTML5 is a core technology markup language of the Internet used for structuring and presenting content for the World Wide Web. As of October 2014 this is the final and complete fifth revision of the HTML standard of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The previous version, HTML 4, was standardised in 1997.

C#

C#

C# (pronounced "See Sharp") is a simple, modern, object-oriented, and type-safe programming language. C# has its roots in the C family of languages and will be immediately familiar to C, C++, Java, and JavaScript programmers.

Scala

Scala

Scala is an acronym for “Scalable Language”. This means that Scala grows with you. You can play with it by typing one-line expressions and observing the results. But you can also rely on it for large mission critical systems, as many companies, including Twitter, LinkedIn, or Intel do. To some, Scala feels like a scripting language. Its syntax is concise and low ceremony; its types get out of the way because the compiler can infer them.

Elixir

Elixir

Elixir leverages the Erlang VM, known for running low-latency, distributed and fault-tolerant systems, while also being successfully used in web development and the embedded software domain.

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