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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
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
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 COBOL
- Business Oriented Language2
Pros of Haskell
- Purely-functional programming90
- Statically typed66
- Type-safe59
- Open source39
- Great community38
- Built-in concurrency31
- Built-in parallelism30
- Composable30
- Referentially transparent24
- Generics20
- Type inference15
- Intellectual satisfaction15
- If it compiles, it's correct12
- Flexible8
- Monads8
- Great type system5
- Proposition testing with QuickCheck4
- One of the most powerful languages *(see blub paradox)*4
- Purely-functional Programming4
- Highly expressive, type-safe, fast development time3
- Pattern matching and completeness checking3
- Great maintainability of the code3
- Fun3
- Reliable3
- Best in class thinking tool2
- Kind system2
- Better type-safe than sorry2
- Type classes2
- Predictable1
- Orthogonality1
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Cons of COBOL
- Extremely long code for simple functions2
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
