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  5. F# vs Haskell vs Scala

F# vs Haskell vs Scala

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Scala
Scala
Stacks11.9K
Followers7.8K
Votes1.5K
GitHub Stars14.4K
Forks3.1K
Haskell
Haskell
Stacks1.4K
Followers1.2K
Votes527
F#
F#
Stacks779
Followers556
Votes399
GitHub Stars2.2K
Forks316

F# vs Haskell vs Scala: What are the differences?

Introduction

In this article, we will explore the key differences between F#, Haskell, and Scala. These three functional programming languages have gained popularity in recent years due to their expressiveness and ability to handle complex problems.

  1. Syntax and Style: F# is a multi-paradigm language that combines functional and object-oriented programming, while Haskell and Scala are purely functional languages. F# and Scala have similar syntax that resembles mainstream programming languages like C#, Java, and Scala. However, Haskell has a more unique syntax with a heavy emphasis on mathematical notations and type inference.

  2. Type Systems: F# and Scala both have static type systems with type inference, meaning the compiler can often deduce the types of variables without explicit type annotations. In contrast, Haskell has a more powerful type system that supports various advanced type features like typeclasses and higher-kinded types.

  3. Concurrency and Parallelism: F# has built-in support for asynchronous programming using the async and await keywords, making it easier to write concurrent and parallel code. Scala also has similar features with its Future and Promise constructs. On the other hand, Haskell takes a different approach to concurrency with its lightweight threads and software transactional memory (STM), which provides a safe and composable way to handle concurrency.

  4. Interoperability: F# and Scala have seamless interoperability with their respective host language ecosystems (.NET and Java), allowing developers to reuse existing libraries and frameworks. Haskell, although it has Foreign Function Interface (FFI) support, may require more effort to integrate with non-Haskell codebases.

  5. Lazy Evaluation: Both Haskell and Scala support lazy evaluation, which allows the programmer to delay the evaluation of expressions until they are needed. This can be useful for handling infinite data structures and optimizing performance. F#, on the other hand, does not have built-in lazy evaluation, but it provides features like sequences and generators that can achieve similar results.

  6. Pattern Matching: Pattern matching is a powerful feature in functional programming languages that allows developers to match the structure of data and perform different actions based on those patterns. F# and Haskell have extensive pattern matching capabilities, while Scala's pattern matching is not as expressive and concise as the other two languages.

Summary:

F#, Haskell, and Scala differ in their syntax, type systems, concurrency models, interoperability, lazy evaluation support, and pattern matching capabilities, making each language suitable for different use cases and preferences.

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Advice on Scala, Haskell, F#

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
Markus
Markus

Feb 3, 2021

Needs adviceonKotlinKotlinJavaJavaF#F#

Hi there. I want to expand my coding toolset. So I want to learn a second backend language besides Kotlin. Kotlin is fantastic. I love it in every aspect, and I think I can never return to Java. And also why should I? It is 100% interoperable with java and can co-exist in every project.

So my question here is. Which language do you think will bring me more joy? I think F#; it is more like Kotlin. Then C# (it's more or like 100% java). But, let's say I learn F#. Is it 100% interoperable like Kotlin? can they live side by side? Can I, then, apply to .NET jr jobs after a while, for example, or is C# the holy cow? I would like to learn .Net.

If it is the worst and only C# is acceptable, then which language should I learn? Dart? Golang?

284k views284k
Comments

Detailed Comparison

Scala
Scala
Haskell
Haskell
F#
F#

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.

F# is a mature, open source, cross-platform, functional-first programming language. It empowers users and organizations to tackle complex computing problems with simple, maintainable and robust code.

-
Statically typed; Purely functional; Type inference; Concurrent
-
Statistics
GitHub Stars
14.4K
GitHub Stars
-
GitHub Stars
2.2K
GitHub Forks
3.1K
GitHub Forks
-
GitHub Forks
316
Stacks
11.9K
Stacks
1.4K
Stacks
779
Followers
7.8K
Followers
1.2K
Followers
556
Votes
1.5K
Votes
527
Votes
399
Pros & Cons
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
Pros
  • 53
    Pattern-matching
  • 42
    Makes programming fun again
  • 38
    Type providers
  • 32
    Delightful
  • 30
    Frictionless
Cons
  • 3
    Microsoft tend to ignore F# preferring to hype C#
  • 2
    Interop between C# can sometimes be difficult
  • 1
    Type Providers can be unstable in larger solutions
  • 1
    Hype
Integrations
Java
Java
No integrations availableNo integrations available

What are some alternatives to Scala, Haskell, F#?

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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