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Chicken VS Elixir

Compare Chicken VS Elixir and see what are their differences

Chicken logo Chicken

A portable and efficient cross-platform Scheme implementation that compiles to C.

Elixir logo Elixir

Dynamic, functional language designed for building scalable and maintainable applications
  • Chicken Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-10-18
  • Elixir Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-07-20

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

Chicken features and specs

  • Simplicity
    Chicken Scheme is designed to be simple and easy to understand, making it accessible for new users and those familiar with Scheme.
  • R5RS Compatibility
    Chicken Scheme implements the R5RS standard, which ensures compatibility with other Scheme implementations and a wide range of Scheme programs.
  • Portability
    It is highly portable and runs on various platforms, making it a flexible choice for cross-platform development.
  • Extensive Libraries
    Chicken has a rich repository of user-contributed extensions (eggs), providing a vast set of libraries that extend its functionality.
  • Performance
    Chicken Scheme is designed for high performance, using an optimizing compiler that translates Scheme code into C, which is then compiled to machine code.

Possible disadvantages of Chicken

  • Limited Community
    Compared to more popular languages, Chicken Scheme has a smaller developer community, which may limit resources and support.
  • Egg Management Complexity
    Managing extensions (eggs) can be complex and sometimes introduces dependency issues that can be challenging to resolve.
  • Learning Curve for Advanced Features
    While basic usage is straightforward, leveraging advanced features and understanding the compiler's workings can have a steep learning curve.
  • Documentation Variability
    The quality and comprehensiveness of documentation can vary, which might complicate the learning and development process for new users.
  • Niche Use Case
    Being a Scheme implementation, its niche use case might not align well with industries primarily relying on mainstream programming languages.

Elixir features and specs

  • Concurrency
    Elixir leverages the Erlang VM (BEAM) for exceptional concurrency support, making it suitable for scalable and fault-tolerant applications.
  • Fault Tolerance
    Built-in supervision trees in Elixir allow for robust fault tolerance, enabling applications to recover gracefully from errors.
  • Performance
    Elixir boasts impressive performance characteristics, especially for I/O-bound operations, thanks to its efficient concurrency model.
  • Ecosystem
    Elixir’s ecosystem, including the Phoenix framework, provides a rich set of libraries and tools for web development and more.
  • Syntax
    Elixir’s syntax is clean and modern, making it more approachable for developers coming from Ruby or other high-level languages.
  • Metaprogramming
    Elixir supports powerful metaprogramming capabilities, enabling DSLs and macros to add custom functionalities in a seamless manner.
  • Scalability
    Elixir applications can scale vertically and horizontally with ease, making it a good choice for growing applications that need to handle increased load.

Possible disadvantages of Elixir

  • Learning Curve
    Despite its approachable syntax, Elixir’s concurrency and fault-tolerant models can be challenging for developers to master.
  • Ecosystem Maturity
    While growing, the Elixir ecosystem isn’t as mature or extensive as that of languages like Python or JavaScript, which might limit available libraries or community support.
  • Tooling
    The tooling around Elixir, while adequate, may not be as polished or feature-rich as in more established languages.
  • Performance
    Although strong in handling concurrent operations, Elixir may not outperform languages like C++ or Go in CPU-bound tasks.
  • Hiring
    Finding experienced Elixir developers can be difficult compared to more prevalent languages like JavaScript or Python, potentially limiting hiring pools.
  • Resource Usage
    Applications built with Elixir can consume more memory compared to applications written in more low-level languages.
  • Framework Dependency
    Reliance on the Phoenix framework means that projects are often tightly coupled to it, which might limit flexibility.

Chicken videos

KFC Nashville Hot Extra Crispy Chicken Review

More videos:

  • Review - KFC's® Nashville Hot Chicken REVIEW!

Elixir videos

Product Review: Elixir - Finally, something good?

More videos:

  • Review - REVIEW SENAR GITAR AKUSTIK TERMAHAL (ELIXIR NANOWEB PHOSPOR BRONZE) ORIGINAL
  • Review - As Seen on IG | Episode 1 | KO Elixir Cream | One Month Update | Product Review

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Chicken and Elixir)
Programming Language
13 13%
87% 87
OOP
16 16%
84% 84
IDE
100 100%
0% 0
Generic Programming Language

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Chicken and Elixir

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Elixir Reviews

Top 10 Rust Alternatives
Elixir is a functional and all-purpose programming language. It is believed to operate on BEAM and uses the imposition of a programming language known as Erlang. This language is typed dynamically and strongly.

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Elixir seems to be a lot more popular than Chicken. While we know about 82 links to Elixir, we've tracked only 6 mentions of Chicken. 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.

Chicken mentions (6)

  • Scheming About Clojure
    Clojure seems good enough. It is not flawless and somewhat overloaded, but far, far ahead of Javascript, Python, Go, or Rust. Of course, I would always prefer CHICKEN Scheme for any passion project. But in an environment that already runs databases written in Java, the JVM has street cred, and a large community hints at sustainability, Clojure presents itself as well balanced in novelty and stability. All in all,... - Source: dev.to / 6 months ago
  • Veryl: A Modern Hardware Description Language
    Of course it does! What else would you call something like chicken scheme [https://call-cc.org/], ats [https://ats-lang.sourceforge.net/], or ghc [https://www.haskell.org/ghc/]? They are not "scripts", they are full-blown compilers that happen to use C as their compilation target, and then leverage C compilers to generate code for a variety of architecures. it's a very sensible way to do things. - Source: Hacker News / about 1 year ago
  • The Rise & Fall of LISP - Too Good For The Rest Of the World
    CHICKEN Scheme \ CHICKEN is a compiler for the Scheme programming language. It produces portable and efficient C and supports the R5RS and R7RS (work in progress) standards, and many extensions. It runs on Linux, OS X, Windows, many Unix flavours... Source: about 2 years ago
  • One Minute: Chicken Scheme
    Website: http://call-cc.org Manual: http://wiki.call-cc.org/manual/index Wiki: http://wiki.call-cc.org/ Repository: https://code.call-cc.org/cgi-bin/gitweb.cgi?p=chicken-core.git;a=summary Standard Libraries: http://wiki.call-cc.org/man/5/Included%20modules Extension Repository: http://eggs.call-cc.org/5/. - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
  • Ante: A low-level functional language
    If you’re fine with tracing GC (which depends on the situation, of course), Standard ML is a perfectly boring language (that IIUC predated and inspired Caml) and MLton[1] is a very nice optimizing compiler for it. The language is awkward at times (in particular, the separate sublanguage of modules can be downright unwieldy), and the library has some of the usual blind spots such as nonexistent Unicode support... - Source: Hacker News / almost 3 years ago
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Elixir mentions (82)

  • Exploring elixir processes using merge sort
    Elixir runs on the Erlang VM, known for creating low latency, distributed, and fault-tolerant systems. Elixir Docs. - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
  • Building a Simple REST API with Elixir
    This guide will walk you through creating a basic REST API using Elixir and Phoenix Framework with thorough comments explaining each piece of code. - Source: dev.to / about 2 months ago
  • An overview of Elixir from C# developer
    Recently, I discovered a programming language called Elixir. Elixir is described as a dynamic, functional language for building scalable and maintainable applications. - Source: dev.to / 2 months ago
  • ABEND dump #15
    The first time I saw and used something similar was using doctests in Elixir 3 years ago, but cram tests are much more versatile. In dune, you can use whichever executable binary. You can make your documentation executable. How cool is that!? - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
  • How to use queue data structure in programming
    Knowing this information, we can start writing our implementation of this data structure. The easiest way to implement this will be through another data structure, an array. To implement this, I will use Elixir, a dynamic, functional programming language that has absorbed the best programming patterns, and I like it a lot. - Source: dev.to / 5 months ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing Chicken and Elixir, you can also consider the following products

Racket Lang - Racket (formerly PLT Scheme) is a modern programming language in the Lisp/Scheme family, suitable...

Rust - A safe, concurrent, practical language

Guile - Guile is the GNU Ubiquitous Intelligent Language for Extensions, the official extension language for the GNU operating system.

Python - Python is a clear and powerful object-oriented programming language, comparable to Perl, Ruby, Scheme, or Java.

Gambit - Cross-platform chess game.

Clojure - Clojure is a dynamic, general-purpose programming language, combining the approachability and interactive development of a scripting language with an efficient and robust infrastructure for multithreaded programming.