Agda VS Haskell

Compare Agda VS Haskell and see what are their differences

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Agda

Agda is a dependently typed functional programming language. It has inductive families, i.e.

Haskell

An advanced purely-functional programming language

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2023-10-20

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2023-05-01

We recommend LibHunt Haskell for discovery and comparisons of trending Haskell projects.

Agda

Website: wiki.portal.chalmers.se
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Haskell

Website: haskell.org
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Agda features and specs

Dependent Types
Agda's type system supports dependent types, allowing types to depend on values. This feature enables very expressive type checking, helping catch more errors at compile time and ensuring program correctness.
Strong Verification
Agda is designed with theorem proving in mind, offering strong capabilities for verifying the properties of programs. It allows developers to write and prove properties about their programs, ensuring a high level of reliability.
Interactive Development
Agda provides an interactive environment, which facilitates program development. This feature helps programmers incrementally build programs by receiving immediate feedback and suggestions, improving productivity and understanding.
Pattern Matching
Agda supports sophisticated pattern matching, which simplifies function definitions and enhances code readability. It allows complex data structures to be easily deconstructed and manipulated.

Possible disadvantages of Agda

Steep Learning Curve
Agda has a steep learning curve due to its advanced type system and syntax. Beginners may find it challenging to grasp the concepts of dependent types and formal proofs without prior experience.
Limited Library Support
Compared to more mainstream programming languages, Agda has limited library and tool support. This can make it difficult to find pre-built solutions and may lead to additional work when building certain applications.
Performance Overhead
Due to its focus on correctness and expressive type system, programs written in Agda might experience performance overheads. The additional checks and proofs can sometimes result in slower runtime performance compared to less strict languages.
Smaller Community
Agda has a relatively small community compared to more popular languages. This can result in fewer learning resources, less community support, and potentially slower development of the language and its ecosystem.

Haskell features and specs

Pure Functional Programming
Haskell emphasizes pure functional programming, meaning functions have no side effects. This leads to code that is easier to understand, test, and maintain.
Strong Type System
Haskell's type system is strong and expressive, allowing developers to catch many errors at compile time. This results in more reliable code.
Lazy Evaluation
Haskell uses lazy evaluation by default, which can lead to performance improvements by avoiding unnecessary computations and enabling the creation of infinite data structures.
Immutability
In Haskell, data is immutable by default. This leads to simpler reasoning about code behavior and reduces bugs related to mutable state.
High-Level Abstractions
Haskell provides powerful abstractions like monads, functors, and applicative functors, which can lead to more concise and expressive code.
Concurrency
Haskell has excellent support for concurrency and parallelism through its lightweight threading model and software transactional memory, making it suitable for concurrent applications.
Community and Libraries
Haskell has a dedicated community and a rich set of libraries and tools, which can help accelerate development and provide solutions to common problems.

Possible disadvantages of Haskell

Steep Learning Curve
Haskell has a steep learning curve, particularly for developers who are new to functional programming or coming from imperative and object-oriented backgrounds.
Performance Concerns
While Haskell can be efficient, its performance can sometimes lag behind other languages like C++ or Rust for certain use cases, especially those requiring low-level optimization.
Limited Industry Adoption
Haskell is not as widely adopted in industry compared to languages like Java, Python, or JavaScript, which can limit job opportunities and community size.
Compilation Times
Haskell's compilation times can be long, especially for large projects, which can slow down the development process.
Tooling and IDE Support
While improving, the tooling and IDE support for Haskell is not as mature as for some other popular languages, potentially affecting developer productivity.
Complexity of Advanced Features
Some of Haskell's advanced features, such as monads and type-level programming, can be complex and difficult to master, which can be a barrier for new developers.
Library Gaps
Although Haskell has many libraries, there might be gaps or less mature libraries for some specific use cases compared to more mainstream languages.

Agda videos

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Twitch: Proving things using Agda!

Haskell videos

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Functional Programming & Haskell - Computerphile

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Agda and Haskell)

Haskell

Programming Language

23 23%

Programming Language

77% 77

OOP

26 26%

OOP

74% 74

Generic Programming Language

31 31%

Generic Programming Language

69% 69

Dynamic Programming Language

100 100%

Dynamic Programming Language

0% 0

User comments

Share your experience with using Agda and Haskell. For example, how are they different and which one is better?

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Haskell should be more popular than Agda. It has been mentiond 21 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Agda mentions (7)

If given a list of properties/definitions and relationship between them, could a machine come up with (mostly senseless, but) true implications?
Still, there are many useful tools based on these ideas, used by programmers and mathematicians alike. What you describe sounds rather like Datalog (e.g. Soufflé Datalog), where you supply some rules and an initial fact, and the system repeatedly expands out the set of facts until nothing new can be derived. (This has to be finite, if you want to get anywhere.) In Prolog (e.g. SWI Prolog) you also supply a set of... Source: almost 2 years ago
What can Category Theory do?
Haskell and Agda are probably the most obvious examples. Ocaml too, but it is much older, so its type system is not as categorical. There is also Idris, which is not as well-known but is very cool. Source: almost 2 years ago
Best Programming Language for Computational Proof
Coq, Agda, Lean, Isabelle, and probably some others which are not coming to my mind at the moment, but those would be considered the major ones. Source: over 2 years ago
If C++ would be safe as Rust, Would you consider your current/next project be in C++?
Safer doesn't mean better. You could proof program correctness, and get proven program with tools like Coq (https://news.ycombinator.com/) and Agda (https://wiki.portal.chalmers.se/agda/pmwiki.php). However, it leads to much higher cost of creating software than both C++ and Rust. It's a trade-off. A great thing about Rust is that the safety costs very little compared to Coq and Agda. Source: over 2 years ago
Do you feel static types have "won the war", so to speak?
At the most extreme level, you disappear into a meditative solitary retreat for a couple of years to seek enlightenment, and when you emerge you're no longer a programmer who writes programs, you're a theorist who proves theorems in Agda, and you have transcended above things that are tainted by the inherent evil of the material plane like "side effects" and "business needs" and "delivery timelines" and "could you... Source: almost 3 years ago

Haskell mentions (21)

Is there a programming language that will blow my mind?
Haskell - a general-purpose functional language with many unique properties (purely functional, lazy, expressive types, STM, etc). You mentioned you dabbled in Haskell, why not try it again? (I've written about 7 things I learned from Haskell, and my book is linked at them bottom if you're interested :) ). Source: almost 2 years ago
Where to go from here?
Where you go is entirely up to you. According to haskell.org, Haskell jobs are a-plenty. sigh. Source: about 2 years ago
Haskell.org now has "Get Started" page!
Should they be part of haskell.org or something else? Source: over 2 years ago
Haskell.org now has "Get Started" page!
Haskell.org now has a big purple Get Started button that takes you to a nice short guide (haskell.org/get-started) that quickly provides all the basic info to get going with Haskell. It is aimed for beginners, to reduce choice fatigue and to give them a clear, official path to get going. Source: over 2 years ago
dev environment for windows
I just jumped into the wiki "Write Yourself a Scheme in 48 hours" which looks pretty good. (although some of the text explanation is hard to understand without context).. I used cabal to set up the starter project. Sublime editor seems to work OK and I just use the git Bash shell on windows to compile the program directly on the command line. So maybe this is all good enough for now (?). It seems installing... Source: over 2 years ago