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  1. Stackups
  2. Application & Data
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  5. Haskell vs OCaml

Haskell vs OCaml

OverviewComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Haskell
Haskell
Stacks1.4K
Followers1.2K
Votes527
OCaml
OCaml
Stacks321
Followers186
Votes28

Haskell vs OCaml: What are the differences?

  1. Type System: Haskell is statically typed, while OCaml is both statically and strongly typed. Haskell uses type inference to deduce types, which can lead to more concise code, while OCaml requires explicit type annotations. This difference can affect how developers write and interact with the codebase.

  2. Lazy vs. Eager Evaluation: Haskell is known for its lazy evaluation strategy, where expressions are not evaluated until their results are needed. In contrast, OCaml uses eager evaluation, meaning expressions are evaluated as soon as they are encountered. This difference can impact the performance and behavior of the programs written in these languages.

  3. Module System: Haskell has a hierarchical module system, allowing developers to organize their code into a tree-like structure. On the other hand, OCaml uses a flat module system, which can simplify the organization of code but may lead to potential naming conflicts. This distinction can influence how developers structure and maintain their projects.

  4. Concurrency Support: Haskell has built-in support for lightweight threads and software transactional memory (STM), making it well-suited for concurrent programming. In contrast, OCaml provides facilities for concurrent programming through libraries like Lwt and Async. This difference affects how developers handle parallelism and concurrency in their applications.

  5. Language Philosophy: Haskell emphasizes purity and immutability, encouraging developers to write functions without side effects. OCaml, while supporting functional programming paradigms, also allows mutable data structures and imperative programming styles. This distinction can impact how developers approach problem-solving and design solutions.

  6. Library Ecosystem: Haskell has a strong emphasis on functional programming libraries and tools, with a focus on type-level and category theory. OCaml, on the other hand, has a broader ecosystem that includes support for imperative programming and system-level development. This difference can influence the availability of resources and support for specific programming tasks.

In Summary, Haskell and OCaml differ in their type systems, evaluation strategies, module systems, support for concurrency, language philosophies, and library ecosystems.

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Detailed Comparison

Haskell
Haskell
OCaml
OCaml

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.

It is an industrial strength programming language supporting functional, imperative and object-oriented styles. It is the technology of choice in companies where a single mistake can cost millions and speed matters,

Statically typed; Purely functional; Type inference; Concurrent
functional style; imperative style; object-oriented style
Statistics
Stacks
1.4K
Stacks
321
Followers
1.2K
Followers
186
Votes
527
Votes
28
Pros & Cons
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 good ABI
  • 3
    No best practices
Pros
  • 7
    Satisfying to write
  • 6
    Pattern matching
  • 4
    Very practical
  • 4
    Also has OOP
  • 3
    Extremely powerful type inference
Cons
  • 3
    Small community
  • 1
    Royal pain in the neck to compile large programs
Integrations
No integrations available
Linux
Linux
Windows
Windows
FreeBSD
FreeBSD
macOS
macOS

What are some alternatives to Haskell, OCaml?

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.

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.

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.

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