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  1. Stackups
  2. Application & Data
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  5. Haskell vs Lua

Haskell vs Lua

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Haskell
Haskell
Stacks1.4K
Followers1.2K
Votes527
Lua
Lua
Stacks2.5K
Followers1.0K
Votes180
GitHub Stars1.5K
Forks452

Haskell vs Lua: What are the differences?

Haskell vs Lua

Haskell and Lua are both programming languages that are used for different purposes. While Haskell is a functional programming language known for its strong typing and type inference, Lua is a lightweight scripting language known for its simplicity and ease of integration. Despite their differences, both languages have their own strengths and use cases. Below are the key differences between Haskell and Lua:

  1. Type System: One major difference between Haskell and Lua is their type systems. Haskell has a static type system that ensures type safety at compile-time, catching potential errors before the program runs. On the other hand, Lua has a dynamic type system where the types are determined at runtime, allowing for more flexibility but also increasing the chances of type-related bugs.

  2. Syntax and Paradigm: Haskell follows a purely functional paradigm, which means that it treats computation as the evaluation of mathematical functions and avoids mutable state and side effects. It has a rich and expressive syntax that heavily relies on pattern matching and high-order functions. Lua, on the other hand, is imperative and supports both procedural and object-oriented programming paradigms. Its syntax is simpler and more lightweight, making it easier to learn and use for scripting tasks.

  3. Performance and Execution: Haskell is known for its focus on strong type checking and program correctness. While this enables Haskell programs to be efficient and highly optimized, it also requires more computational overhead. In contrast, Lua prioritizes runtime performance and is designed to be lightweight and fast, making it suitable for embedded systems and game development.

  4. Community and Libraries: Haskell has a niche but passionate community that values correctness, purity, and function composition. It has a strong ecosystem of libraries and tools specifically tailored for functional programming needs. On the other hand, Lua has a larger and more diverse community due to its versatility and popularity in game development. It also has a wide range of libraries and frameworks available for various purposes, especially in the domain of scripting and embedding.

  5. Concurrency and Parallelism: Haskell has built-in support for concurrent and parallel programming through its powerful abstractions like Software Transactional Memory (STM) and libraries like Control.Concurrent. This allows developers to write highly concurrent and parallel applications without worrying about low-level details. Lua, on the other hand, relies on external libraries or extensions for concurrency and parallelism, such as LuaCorooutines and LuaLanes.

  6. Domain and Use Cases: Haskell is commonly used in academic and research settings, where correctness and formal verification are of high importance. It is also well-suited for complex data manipulation, algorithmic problem-solving, and compiler construction. Lua, on the other hand, is often used for scripting tasks, game development, and embedded scripting in larger software systems. Its simplicity and ease of integration make it popular for extending or customizing existing software.

In summary, Haskell and Lua differ in their type systems, paradigms, performance focus, communities, concurrency support, and use cases. While Haskell emphasizes strong typing and functional purity, Lua prioritizes simplicity, performance, and scriptability. The choice between the two depends on the specific requirements and context of the project at hand.

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Advice on Haskell, Lua

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.

682k views682k
Comments
Gamerians
Gamerians

May 21, 2020

Needs adviceonLuaLuaPythonPythonJavaJava

I am trying to make Roblox game which requires Lua. I quite don't want to go with Lua just because other tools just might let me do more projects later on. I heard that Python is most similar to Lua, but I am still not sure which tool to use. Java, I think it will help me with many stuff later on for websites, projects, and more!

470k views470k
Comments

Detailed Comparison

Haskell
Haskell
Lua
Lua

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.

Lua combines simple procedural syntax with powerful data description constructs based on associative arrays and extensible semantics. Lua is dynamically typed, runs by interpreting bytecode for a register-based virtual machine, and has automatic memory management with incremental garbage collection, making it ideal for configuration, scripting, and rapid prototyping.

Statically typed; Purely functional; Type inference; Concurrent
-
Statistics
GitHub Stars
-
GitHub Stars
1.5K
GitHub Forks
-
GitHub Forks
452
Stacks
1.4K
Stacks
2.5K
Followers
1.2K
Followers
1.0K
Votes
527
Votes
180
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 good ABI
  • 3
    No best practices
Pros
  • 41
    Fast learning curve
  • 26
    Very easy to embed in C programs
  • 26
    Efficient memory usage
  • 20
    Open source
  • 19
    Good for game scripting
Cons
  • 4
    Nooby
  • 2
    Not widespread
  • 1
    D
  • 0
    Python

What are some alternatives to Haskell, Lua?

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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