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  5. Elm vs ReasonML

Elm vs ReasonML

OverviewComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Elm
Elm
Stacks758
Followers744
Votes319
ReasonML
ReasonML
Stacks75
Followers93
Votes8

Elm vs ReasonML: What are the differences?

# Introduction
This markdown will outline the key differences between Elm and ReasonML.

1. **Syntax**: Elm has a more rigid syntax with a focus on simplicity and readability, while ReasonML offers more flexibility and is closer to traditional JavaScript syntax.
2. **Type System**: Elm has a simpler type system with strong static typing, while ReasonML provides a more complex type system with support for both static and dynamic typing.
3. **Frameworks and Ecosystem**: Elm has a smaller but more curated ecosystem with its own framework, while ReasonML can leverage the larger ecosystem of JavaScript libraries and frameworks.
4. **Compilation Target**: Elm compiles to JavaScript only, while ReasonML can target both JavaScript and native code with the help of BuckleScript.
5. **Immutability**: Elm enforces immutability by default, making it easier to reason about state changes, whereas ReasonML allows mutability but encourages immutability through its functional programming features.
6. **Community Support**: Elm has a dedicated and friendly community that focuses on simplicity and ease of use, while ReasonML's community is more diverse and includes developers from various backgrounds with different preferences and priorities.

In summary, Elm and ReasonML significantly differ in syntax, type system, ecosystem, compilation targets, approach to immutability, and community support.

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Detailed Comparison

Elm
Elm
ReasonML
ReasonML

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.

It lets you write simple, fast and quality type safe code while leveraging both the JavaScript & OCaml ecosystems.It is powerful, safe type inference means you rarely have to annotate types, but everything gets checked for you.

No Runtime Exceptions; Fearless refactoring; Understand anyone's code; Fast and friendly feedback; Enforced Semantic Versioning; Small Assets
-
Statistics
Stacks
758
Stacks
75
Followers
744
Followers
93
Votes
319
Votes
8
Pros & Cons
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
    More code is required
Pros
  • 4
    Pattern Matching
  • 3
    Type System
  • 1
    React
Cons
  • 1
    Bindings

What are some alternatives to Elm, ReasonML?

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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