Software Alternatives & Startups

Erlang VS JavaScript

Compare Erlang VS JavaScript and see what are their differences

Erlang

A programming language used to build massively scalable soft real-time systems with requirements on high availability

Rating
0 reviews
Pricing
Open source
JavaScript

Lightweight, interpreted, object-oriented language with first-class functions

Rating
0 reviews

Which is more popular?

Based on our record, Erlang seems to be more popular. It has been mentioned 3 times since March 2021.

social mentions
3 vs 0
Programming Language popularity
31% vs 69%
alternatives listed
84 vs 240+

Base details

Website, pricing, platforms and company facts side by side.

Erlang
JavaScript
Website erlang.org developer.mozilla.org
Pricing
Open source
Listed in

About Erlang and JavaScript

In their own words, as submitted to SaaSHub.

Erlang
JavaScript

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

Read more about Erlang

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

Read more about JavaScript

Features and specs

What each product offers, as listed by its team.

Erlang 6 features
JavaScript 6 features
  • Concurrency
    Erlang is designed for massive concurrency and supports thousands of lightweight processes, making it ideal for applications requiring multiple parallel operations.
  • Fault Tolerance
    Erlang provides robust support for fault tolerance, with built-in mechanisms for process monitoring and error recovery, leading to high system availability.
  • Distributed Computing
    Erlang's architecture facilitates distributed computing with easy support for building scalable, distributed systems across multiple nodes.
  • Hot Code Swapping
    Erlang supports hot code swapping, enabling developers to update code on a live system without requiring a system restart, which is crucial for continuous operation.
  • Functional Programming
    Erlang’s functional programming paradigm leads to simpler code with fewer side effects, improving maintainability.
  • Strong Community
    Erlang has a strong community, with a wealth of resources, libraries, and frameworks that support developers in building efficient systems.

Possible disadvantages

  • Learning Curve
    Erlang has a steep learning curve, especially for developers who are not familiar with functional programming or its concurrency model.
  • Syntax
    The syntax of Erlang can be unfamiliar and challenging to new users, which may hinder the initial coding experience.
  • Limited Libraries
    Despite having a strong community, Erlang has fewer libraries and tools compared to more popular languages, which may limit development options for certain applications.
  • Performance Limitations
    While Erlang excels in concurrency, its performance for compute-intensive tasks might not match that of languages specifically optimized for such operations.
  • Niche Use Cases
    Erlang's strengths in certain niches like telecoms and real-time systems might not translate well to more general or varied software development tasks, limiting its adoption.
  • Wide Browser Support
    JavaScript is supported by all modern web browsers without the need for any plugins, making it highly versatile for client-side scripting.
  • Asynchronous Programming
    JavaScript supports asynchronous programming with features like callbacks, Promises, and async/await, which helps in efficiently handling tasks such as HTTP requests.
  • Rich Ecosystem and Libraries
    The JavaScript ecosystem includes a vast amount of libraries and frameworks like React, Angular, Vue, and Node.js, which streamline development processes.
  • Community Support
    JavaScript has a large and active community, providing extensive resources, documentation, and forums for troubleshooting and development advice.
  • Event-Driven
    The language is inherently event-driven, making it suitable for developing interactive web applications that react to user inputs.
  • Full-Stack Development
    With the advent of Node.js, JavaScript can be used for both client-side and server-side development, enabling full-stack development using a single language.

Possible disadvantages

  • Security Issues
    Being an interpreted language that runs in the browser, JavaScript code is visible to the user, making it susceptible to security risks such as Cross-Site Scripting (XSS).
  • Browser Compatibility
    While JavaScript itself is widely supported, different browsers may implement JavaScript functions and standards differently, leading to compatibility issues.
  • Performance
    JavaScript is generally slower than compiled languages such as C++ or Java. Heavy computations can lead to performance bottlenecks.
  • Single Inheritance
    JavaScript uses prototypal inheritance instead of classical inheritance, which can be confusing for developers coming from object-oriented programming backgrounds.
  • Dynamic Typing
    JavaScript's dynamic typing can lead to runtime errors that are hard to debug, as variable types are checked at runtime rather than during compilation.
  • Fragmentation
    The ecosystem has many competing libraries, frameworks, and tools, which can make it overwhelming for developers to choose the right technologies for their projects.

Videos

Walkthroughs and reviews on video.

Erlang 2 videos + Add
JavaScript 3 videos + Add

Book Review - Erlang in Anger

More videos

  • - Erlang is getting pretty! - Michal Muskala | Code BEAM SF 20

Learn JavaScript in 7 minutes | Create Interactive Websites | Code in 5

More videos

  • - Top 10 JavaScript Interview Questions
  • - Learn JavaScript in 12 Minutes

Category popularity

How often each product is chosen within a category, 0–100% relative to the other.

Score bands 0–20 21–40 41–50 51–60 61–100
Erlang
JavaScript
31% 31%
69% 69%
33% 33%
OOP
67% 67%
100% 100%
0% 0%

User comments

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

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Reviews and articles

External articles and on-site reviews we used to compare the two products.

Erlang no reviews yet
JavaScript no reviews yet

We have no reviews of Erlang yet. Be the first one to post

  • Top 10 Rust Alternatives
    blog.back4app.com · Apr 2022

    In simple words, the main goal of JavaScript is to develop web pages and is used for authentication procedures. Some of the pros of using JavaScript as an alternative to Rust are follows.

  • Top 15 jQuery Alternatives To Know
    www.spec-india.com · Oct 2021

    ExtJS, as the name suggests, stands for Extended JavaScript. As an offering from Sencha, it depends on YahooUserInterface. ExtJS helps in creating data intensified HTML5 apps with JavaScript. It consists of a huge...

  • The 10 Best Programming Languages to Learn Today
    ict.gov.ge · Jan 2020

    JavaScript skills are always in high demand – most of the world's top websites and apps rely on JavaScript in one way or another. Plus, JavaScript is a great springboard for learning more complex programming languages.

Social recommendations and mentions

Recommendations tracked on public social media and blogs since March 2021.

Erlang 3 mentions
JavaScript 0 mentions
  • Standalone HTTP Server in Elixir with Bandit
    Writing Elixir code is not really exciting to me, but, to be honest, if someone today wants to create an application from scratch and is looking for a big pool developers and a battle tested distributed infrastructure (the BEAM VM),... - Source: dev.to / 5 months ago
  • Perfect Elixir: Environment Setup
    I’m on MacOS and erlang.org, elixir-lang.org, and postgresql.org all suggest installation via Homebrew, which is a very popular package manager for MacOS. - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
  • What is Calypso?
    However, as Elixir is inherently tied to the BEAM and Erlang/OTP, it means that it has features like immutable variables (though you can rebind them and have state via process loops, e.g. Agents or GenServers). This also means that OTP... - Source: dev.to / over 5 years ago

Tracking JavaScript since Mar 2021.

Alternatives to Erlang and JavaScript

When comparing Erlang and JavaScript, you can also consider the following products.

  • Elixir

    Dynamic, functional language designed for building scalable and maintainable applications

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  • Python

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  • Perl

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  • Java

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  • C++

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  • PHP

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