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  5. Common Lisp vs Elixir vs Elm

Common Lisp vs Elixir vs Elm

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Common Lisp
Common Lisp
Stacks269
Followers255
Votes145
Elixir
Elixir
Stacks3.5K
Followers3.3K
Votes1.3K
GitHub Stars26.0K
Forks3.5K
Elm
Elm
Stacks758
Followers744
Votes319

Common Lisp vs Elixir vs Elm: What are the differences?

Introduction:

Key differences between Common Lisp, Elixir, and Elm:

  1. Programming Paradigm: Common Lisp is primarily a functional programming language with imperative features. Elixir is a functional language that runs on the Erlang VM, providing concurrency and fault tolerance. Elm is a functional language for front-end web development, focusing on creating reliable and maintainable user interfaces.

  2. Concurrency Model: Common Lisp has limited support for concurrency compared to Elixir, which leverages Erlang's actor model to achieve lightweight concurrency. Elm, on the other hand, handles concurrency through a virtual DOM and time-traveling debugger, making it easier to manage state changes in web applications.

  3. Syntax and Tooling: Common Lisp has a Lisp-like syntax with powerful macro capabilities, while Elixir has a Ruby-like syntax with metaprogramming features. Elm has a strong type system with an emphasis on immutability, enabling safer refactoring and eliminating runtime errors commonly found in JavaScript.

  4. Community and Libraries: Common Lisp has a smaller community and library ecosystem compared to Elixir, which benefits from the wider adoption of the Erlang platform. Elm has a growing community focused on functional programming in web development, with dedicated tools like the Elm Architecture for building scalable applications.

  5. Compilation and Deployment: Common Lisp typically uses a compiler to generate executables, while Elixir compiles down to bytecode that runs on the Erlang VM. Elm compiles to JavaScript, allowing developers to integrate front-end code with existing web applications and frameworks seamlessly.

  6. Error Handling and Debugging: Common Lisp provides extensive support for debugging with features like the Lisp debugger, while Elixir emphasizes fault tolerance through supervision trees and error handling mechanisms. Elm promotes a declarative approach to error handling, catching bugs at compile time and offering informative error messages to aid in development.

In Summary, Common Lisp, Elixir, and Elm differ in their programming paradigms, concurrency models, syntax, community support, compilation and deployment methods, and approaches to error handling and debugging to cater to a diverse range of development needs.

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Advice on Common Lisp, Elixir, Elm

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
Jakes
Jakes

Mar 21, 2021

Decided

#rust @{#elixir}|topic:null| So am creating a messenger with voice call capabilities app which the user signs up using phone number and so at first i wanted to use Actix so i learned Rust so i thought to myself because well its first i felt its a bit immature to use actix web even though some companies are using Rust but we cant really say the full potential of Rust in a full scale app for example in Discord both Elixir and Rust are used meaning there is equal need for them but for Elixir so many companies use it from Whatsapp, Wechat, etc and this means something for Rust is not ready to go full scale we cant assume all this possibilities when it come Rust. So i decided to go the Erlang way after alot of Thinking so Do you think i made the right decision?Am 19 year programmer so i assume am not experienced as you so your answer or comment would really valuable to me

284k views284k
Comments

Detailed Comparison

Common Lisp
Common Lisp
Elixir
Elixir
Elm
Elm

Lisp was originally created as a practical mathematical notation for computer programs, influenced by the notation of Alonzo Church's lambda calculus. It quickly became the favored programming language for artificial intelligence (AI) research. As one of the earliest programming languages, Lisp pioneered many ideas in computer science, including tree data structures, automatic storage management, dynamic typing, conditionals, higher-order functions, recursion, and the self-hosting compiler. [source: wikipedia]

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.

Writing HTML apps is super easy with elm-lang/html. Not only does it render extremely fast, it also quietly guides you towards well-architected code.

--
No Runtime Exceptions; Fearless refactoring; Understand anyone's code; Fast and friendly feedback; Enforced Semantic Versioning; Small Assets
Statistics
GitHub Stars
-
GitHub Stars
26.0K
GitHub Stars
-
GitHub Forks
-
GitHub Forks
3.5K
GitHub Forks
-
Stacks
269
Stacks
3.5K
Stacks
758
Followers
255
Followers
3.3K
Followers
744
Votes
145
Votes
1.3K
Votes
319
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 24
    Flexibility
  • 22
    High-performance
  • 17
    Comfortable: garbage collection, closures, macros, REPL
  • 13
    Stable
  • 12
    Lisp
Cons
  • 4
    Too many Parentheses
  • 3
    Standard did not evolve since 1994
  • 2
    No hygienic macros
  • 2
    Small library ecosystem
  • 1
    Inadequate community infrastructure
Pros
  • 174
    Concurrency
  • 163
    Functional
  • 133
    Erlang vm
  • 113
    Great documentation
  • 105
    Great tooling
Cons
  • 11
    Fewer jobs for Elixir experts
  • 7
    Smaller userbase than other mainstream languages
  • 5
    Elixir's dot notation less readable ("object": 1st arg)
  • 4
    Dynamic typing
  • 2
    Difficult to understand
Pros
  • 45
    Code stays clean
  • 44
    Great type system
  • 40
    No Runtime Exceptions
  • 33
    Fun
  • 28
    Easy to understand
Cons
  • 3
    No typeclasses -> repitition (i.e. map has 130versions)
  • 2
    JS interop can not be async
  • 2
    JS interoperability a bit more involved
  • 1
    No JSX/Template
  • 1
    No communication with users

What are some alternatives to Common Lisp, Elixir, Elm?

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.

Meteor

Meteor

A Meteor application is a mix of JavaScript that runs inside a client web browser, JavaScript that runs on the Meteor server inside a Node.js container, and all the supporting HTML fragments, CSS rules, and static assets.

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.

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