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Haskell VS Racket Lang

Compare Haskell VS Racket Lang and see what are their differences

Haskell logo Haskell

An advanced purely-functional programming language

Racket Lang logo Racket Lang

Racket (formerly PLT Scheme) is a modern programming language in the Lisp/Scheme family, suitable...
  • Haskell Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-05-01

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

  • Racket Lang Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-07-30

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

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.

Racket Lang features and specs

  • Metaprogramming
    Racket excels at metaprogramming, allowing developers to easily create domain-specific languages and macros to suit their specific needs. This makes it highly flexible and powerful for developing complex programs.
  • Rich Libraries
    Racket comes with a large standard library and an active package ecosystem, providing a vast array of tools and frameworks for different types of applications from web development to scientific computing.
  • Educational Use
    Racket is widely used in academic settings, particularly for teaching computer science and programming. It offers a pedagogic environment designed to help learners understand fundamental principles easily.
  • Interactive Development
    Racket's REPL (Read-Eval-Print Loop) allows for interactive development, making it easy to test and debug code snippets on the fly. This can speed up the development process and facilitate rapid prototyping.
  • Cross-Platform
    Racket is a cross-platform language and runs on various operating systems such as Windows, macOS, and Linux. This ensures that programs written in Racket can be easily shared and executed on different systems without modification.

Possible disadvantages of Racket Lang

  • Performance
    Racket is generally not as performant as lower-level languages like C or Rust. This can be a limitation for applications requiring high computational efficiency, such as real-time systems.
  • Smaller Community
    While Racket has a dedicated user base, its community is relatively small compared to languages like Python or JavaScript. This can make it more challenging to find resources, tutorials, or third-party libraries.
  • Steep Learning Curve
    Racket's unique features and advanced concepts such as continuations and macros may present a steep learning curve for beginners who are not already familiar with Lisp-like languages or functional programming paradigms.
  • Limited Industry Adoption
    Racket is not as widely adopted in the industry as some other languages, which can limit job opportunities and its overall presence in commercial software development.
  • Verbose Syntax
    Racket's syntax can be verbose and complex due to its Lisp heritage, which uses extensive parentheses. This can make the code harder to read and maintain, especially for those not accustomed to it.

Haskell videos

Functional Programming & Haskell - Computerphile

More videos:

  • Review - Marloe Haskell Review
  • Review - Marloe Watch Company - Haskell - Watch Review

Racket Lang videos

🏸 Top & Best Selling Badminton Rackets 2020 (review of Year 2019) 🏆

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Haskell and Racket Lang)
Programming Language
47 47%
53% 53
OOP
44 44%
56% 56
Generic Programming Language
Learning Resources
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Racket Lang should be more popular than Haskell. It has been mentiond 95 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.

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
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Racket Lang mentions (95)

  • Cloudflare Topaz: formal verification to prevent conflicts in DNS configuration
    Racket! https://racket-lang.org/ “Whenever an engineer changes one of these programs, we run all the programs through our custom model checker (written in Racket + Rosette)”. - Source: Hacker News / 6 months ago
  • The Little Typer (2018)
    Friedman's books are all great. All of them. But they don't work for everybody. If you can be relaxed and think of the interaction as play, they're very good. If you're feeling more of a "serious business" mindset, it can be hard to get in the groove of his style. There are a lot of jokes about food and encouragement to take breaks. If you can get into the learning as play mindset, I'd strongly encourage taking... - Source: Hacker News / 7 months ago
  • Ask HN: What programming language should I learn?
    - pipe operator It compiles to either erlang or JavaScript, so I was able to jump right into building something fun with a new language. >I previously gave Clojure a try, that was a pretty good fit, but the JVM / ecosystem put me off. I felt similarly w/ leiningen (too much boilerplate) but was lisp-curious still so gave racket (https://racket-lang.org/) a try and appreciated the batteries included philosophy of... - Source: Hacker News / 8 months ago
  • Ask HN: Which language is easiest to get started with functional programming?
    Biased recommendation: Try racket https://racket-lang.org/ It's not pure functional, but the preferred style is to use mostly functional constructs. (But you can cheat when it get's too difficult or you need some extra speed.) (And you can download packages like Qi that enable a new language inside Racket that has more support for functional style.) (Most Schemes have a similar mostly-functional style, so you can... - Source: Hacker News / 9 months ago
  • Racket–the Language-Oriented Programming Language–version 8.12 is now available
    Racket—the Language-Oriented Programming Language—version 8.12 is now available from https://racket-lang.org See https://racket.discourse.group/t/racket-v8-12-is-now-available/2709 for the release announcement and highlights. Thank you to the many people who contributed to this release! Feedback Welcome. - Source: Hacker News / about 1 year ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing Haskell and Racket Lang, you can also consider the following products

Rust - A safe, concurrent, practical language

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.

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

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

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

Java - A concurrent, class-based, object-oriented, language specifically designed to have as few implementation dependencies as possible