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Clojure vs Common Lisp vs Haskell: What are the differences?
Introduction
Clojure, Common Lisp, and Haskell are three popular functional programming languages with distinctive features. To understand their differences, we will highlight key aspects that set them apart.
Syntax: Clojure uses a Lisp syntax with a focus on simplicity and minimalism, leveraging the parentheses-heavy S-expression format. Common Lisp offers a more verbose syntax with a rich set of built-in constructs, making it suitable for a wide range of tasks. Haskell, on the other hand, uses a unique mix of functional and imperative styles, featuring distinctive type signatures and type inference capabilities.
Concurrency: Clojure emphasizes immutable data structures and software transactional memory for managing concurrency. Common Lisp provides multiprocessing capabilities through its threads and processes model. Haskell incorporates lazy evaluation and pure functions to enhance concurrency handling, with features like Software Transactional Memory (STM) in its toolbox.
Type System: Clojure is dynamically typed, allowing for rapid prototyping and flexibility in development. Common Lisp supports both strong and weak typing paradigms, providing developers with a choice based on project requirements. Haskell boasts a powerful static type system that ensures type safety at compile time, promoting robust and reliable code.
Community and Ecosystem: The Clojure community is known for its emphasis on simplicity, immutability, and the pragmatic programming philosophy. Common Lisp boasts a long-standing and dedicated community that continues to maintain and expand libraries and tools. Haskell's community is renowned for its focus on purity, correctness, and mathematical rigor, supporting developers in creating high-performance and reliable software.
Learning Curve: Clojure's minimalist syntax and functional programming concepts make it relatively accessible for newcomers, especially those familiar with Lisp-style languages. Common Lisp's rich feature set and syntactic flexibility can lead to a steeper learning curve for beginners. Haskell's strong emphasis on types and functional programming principles may pose a challenge for individuals transitioning from imperative languages.
Use Cases: Clojure is well-suited for web development, data processing, and concurrent programming due to its emphasis on immutability and simplicity. Common Lisp shines in AI research, language design, and rapid prototyping, offering a mature ecosystem for various domains. Haskell excels in creating high-performance, reliable, and mathematically rigorous software, making it popular in industries such as finance, academia, and research.
In Summary, Clojure, Common Lisp, and Haskell differ in syntax, concurrency handling, type systems, community focus, learning curves, and preferred use cases, each offering distinct advantages for various programming tasks.
We’re a new startup so we need to be able to deliver quick changes as we find our product market fit. We’ve also got to ensure that we’re moving money safely, and keeping perfect records. The technologies we’ve chosen mix mature but well maintained frameworks like Django, with modern web-first and api-first front ends like GraphQL, NextJS, and Chakra. We use a little Golang sparingly in our backend to ensure that when we interact with financial services, we do so with statically compiled, strongly typed, and strictly limited and reviewed code.
You can read all about it in our linked blog post.
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.
Pros of Clojure
- It is a lisp117
- Persistent data structures100
- Concise syntax100
- jvm-based language90
- Concurrency89
- Interactive repl81
- Code is data76
- Open source61
- Lazy data structures61
- Macros57
- Functional49
- Simplistic23
- Immutable by default22
- Excellent collections20
- Fast-growing community19
- Multiple host languages15
- Simple (not easy!)15
- Practical Lisp15
- Because it's really fun to use10
- Addictive10
- Community9
- Web friendly9
- Rapid development9
- It creates Reusable code9
- Minimalist8
- Programmable programming language6
- Java interop6
- Regained interest in programming5
- Compiles to JavaScript4
- Share a lot of code with clojurescript/use on frontend3
- EDN3
- Clojurescript1
Pros of Common Lisp
- Flexibility24
- High-performance22
- Comfortable: garbage collection, closures, macros, REPL17
- Stable13
- Lisp12
- Code is data8
- Can integrate with C (via CFFI)6
- Multi paradigm6
- Lisp is fun5
- Macros4
- Easy Setup4
- Parentheses3
- Open source3
- Purelly functional3
- Elegant3
- DSLs1
- Multiple values1
- CLOS/MOP1
- Clean semantics1
- Will still be relevant 100 years from now1
- Still decades ahead of almost all programming languages1
- Best programming language1
- Simple syntax1
- Powerful1
- Generic functions1
- Can implement almost any feature as a library1
- Formal specification, multiple implementations1
Pros of Haskell
- Purely-functional programming90
- Statically typed66
- Type-safe59
- Open source39
- Great community38
- Built-in concurrency31
- Built-in parallelism30
- Composable30
- Referentially transparent24
- Generics20
- Intellectual satisfaction15
- Type inference15
- If it compiles, it's correct12
- Monads8
- Flexible8
- Great type system5
- Purely-functional Programming4
- One of the most powerful languages *(see blub paradox)*4
- Proposition testing with QuickCheck4
- Pattern matching and completeness checking3
- Great maintainability of the code3
- Fun3
- Reliable3
- Highly expressive, type-safe, fast development time3
- Best in class thinking tool2
- Type classes2
- Kind system2
- Better type-safe than sorry2
- Orthogonality1
- Predictable1
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Cons of Clojure
- Cryptic stacktraces11
- Need to wrap basically every java lib5
- Toxic community4
- Good code heavily relies on local conventions3
- Tonns of abandonware3
- Slow application startup3
- Usable only with REPL1
- Hiring issues1
- It's a lisp1
- Bad documented libs1
- Macros are overused by devs1
- Tricky profiling1
- IDE with high learning curve1
- Configuration bolierplate1
- Conservative community1
- Have no good and fast fmt0
Cons of Common Lisp
- Too many Parentheses4
- Standard did not evolve since 19943
- Small library ecosystem2
- No hygienic macros2
- Inadequate community infrastructure1
- Ultra-conservative community1
Cons of Haskell
- Too much distraction in language extensions9
- Error messages can be very confusing8
- Libraries have poor documentation5
- No good ABI3
- No best practices3
- Poor packaging for apps written in it for Linux distros2
- Sometimes performance is unpredictable2
- Slow compilation1
- Monads are hard to understand1
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What is Clojure?
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