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  1. Stackups
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  5. Erlang vs Haskell vs Scala

Erlang vs Haskell vs Scala

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Erlang
Erlang
Stacks1.4K
Followers749
Votes345
GitHub Stars11.9K
Forks3.0K
Scala
Scala
Stacks11.9K
Followers7.8K
Votes1.5K
GitHub Stars14.4K
Forks3.1K
Haskell
Haskell
Stacks1.4K
Followers1.2K
Votes527

Erlang vs Haskell vs Scala: What are the differences?

Introduction

This markdown code provides a comparison between Erlang, Haskell, and Scala, highlighting the key differences between these programming languages.

  1. Concurrency Model: Erlang is known for its built-in support for concurrency and parallelism with lightweight processes and message passing. It follows the actor model, where processes communicate by exchanging messages. On the other hand, Haskell primarily follows the purely functional programming paradigm and uses lazy evaluation, with concurrency achieved through higher-level abstractions like software transactional memory. Scala combines both object-oriented and functional programming and provides actors for concurrent and distributed programming, similar to Erlang.

  2. Type Systems: Erlang has a dynamic type system, which means that variable types are checked at runtime. It provides flexibility but can lead to potential runtime errors. Haskell, in contrast, has a strong static type system with type inference, ensuring type safety at compile-time. It leverages the Hindley-Milner type system and allows for more robust code and better error checking. Scala, similar to Haskell, adopts a statically typed system with type inference but supports both object-oriented and functional programming styles.

  3. Pattern Matching: Erlang is known for its powerful pattern matching capabilities, which allow matching complex data structures easily. It uses pattern matching extensively in functions and case statements. Haskell also provides strong pattern matching support, which is deeply integrated into the language and enables concise and expressive code. Scala, although supporting pattern matching, it is not as deeply integrated as in Erlang or Haskell, limiting its scope and expressiveness.

  4. Tooling and Libraries: Erlang provides a mature and stable runtime system, along with a wide range of libraries and frameworks tailored for distributed, fault-tolerant systems, such as OTP (Open Telecom Platform). Haskell has a vibrant ecosystem with a strong focus on academia and research, offering numerous libraries for various domains. However, the tooling and package management in Haskell can be less mature and may require additional configuration. Scala, being built on top of the Java Virtual Machine (JVM), benefits from Java's extensive libraries and tooling ecosystems. It has a wide range of libraries available for different use cases, making it popular for building scalable and enterprise-grade applications.

  5. Syntax and Programming Paradigm: Erlang's syntax is more declarative and focuses on concurrency and fault-tolerance, making it suitable for building distributed systems. Haskell emphasizes functional programming and has a mathematical syntax, allowing for concise and expressive code. Scala combines object-oriented and functional paradigms, offering a more flexible syntax that can cater to different programming styles. It provides the ability to intermix imperative, functional, and object-oriented code within a single language.

  6. Community and Industry Adoption: Erlang has a smaller but dedicated community, primarily used in telecommunications and distributed systems. It has proven its reliability and scalability in telecom infrastructure. Haskell, widely used in academia and research, has a smaller community compared to mainstream languages but has gained popularity in finance and fintech sectors. Scala, being interoperable with Java, has gained significant adoption in the industry, especially for building large-scale, scalable applications. It has a larger community and is supported by many organizations.

In summary, Erlang excels in concurrency and fault-tolerant systems, Haskell emphasizes purity and type safety, and Scala combines object-oriented and functional paradigms with strong industry adoption. Each language has its strengths and can be chosen depending on the specific requirements of the project.

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Advice on Erlang, Scala, Haskell

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
Nicholas
Nicholas

Jan 29, 2021

Decided

I am working in the domain of big data and machine learning. I am helping companies with bringing their machine learning models to the production. In many projects there is a tendency to port Python, PySpark code to Scala and Scala Spark.

This yields to longer time to market and a lot of mistakes due to necessity to understand and re-write the code. Also many libraries/apis that data scientists/machine learning practitioners use are not available in jvm ecosystem.

Simply, refactoring (if necessary) and organising the code of the data scientists by following best practices of software development is less error prone and faster comparing to re-write in Scala.

Pipeline orchestration tools such as Luigi/Airflow is python native and fits well to this picture.

I have heard some arguments against Python such as, it is slow, or it is hard to maintain due to its dynamically typed language. However cost/benefit of time consumed porting python code to java/scala alone would be enough as a counter-argument. ML pipelines rarerly contains a lot of code (if that is not the case, such as complex domain and significant amount of code, then scala would be a better fit).

In terms of performance, I did not see any issues with Python. It is not the fastest runtime around but ML applications are rarely time-critical (majority of them is batch based).

I still prefer Scala for developing APIs and for applications where the domain contains complex logic.

198k views198k
Comments
Jakub
Jakub

Jan 2, 2020

Decided

We needed to incorporate Big Data Framework for data stream analysis, specifically Apache Spark / Apache Storm. The three options of languages were most suitable for the job - Python, Java, Scala.

The winner was Python for the top of the class, high-performance data analysis libraries (NumPy, Pandas) written in C, quick learning curve, quick prototyping allowance, and a great connection with other future tools for machine learning as Tensorflow.

The whole code was shorter & more readable which made it easier to develop and maintain.

290k views290k
Comments

Detailed Comparison

Erlang
Erlang
Scala
Scala
Haskell
Haskell

Some of Erlang's uses are in telecoms, banking, e-commerce, computer telephony and instant messaging. Erlang's runtime system has built-in support for concurrency, distribution and fault tolerance. OTP is set of Erlang libraries and design principles providing middle-ware to develop these systems.

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.

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.

--
Statically typed; Purely functional; Type inference; Concurrent
Statistics
GitHub Stars
11.9K
GitHub Stars
14.4K
GitHub Stars
-
GitHub Forks
3.0K
GitHub Forks
3.1K
GitHub Forks
-
Stacks
1.4K
Stacks
11.9K
Stacks
1.4K
Followers
749
Followers
7.8K
Followers
1.2K
Votes
345
Votes
1.5K
Votes
527
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 62
    Concurrency Support
  • 62
    Real time, distributed applications
  • 58
    Fault tolerance
  • 36
    Soft real-time
  • 32
    Open source
Cons
  • 1
    Languange is not popular demand
Pros
  • 188
    Static typing
  • 178
    Pattern-matching
  • 175
    Jvm
  • 172
    Scala is fun
  • 138
    Types
Cons
  • 11
    Slow compilation time
  • 7
    Multiple ropes and styles to hang your self
  • 6
    Too few developers available
  • 4
    Complicated subtyping
  • 2
    My coworkers using scala are racist against other stuff
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 best practices
  • 3
    No good ABI
Integrations
No integrations available
Java
Java
No integrations available

What are some alternatives to Erlang, Scala, Haskell?

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.

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.

Swift

Swift

Writing code is interactive and fun, the syntax is concise yet expressive, and apps run lightning-fast. Swift is ready for your next iOS and OS X project — or for addition into your current app — because Swift code works side-by-side with Objective-C.

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