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Hy VS JavaScript

Compare Hy VS JavaScript and see what are their differences

Hy logo Hy

Hy is a wonderful dialect of Lisp that’s embedded in Python.

JavaScript logo JavaScript

Lightweight, interpreted, object-oriented language with first-class functions
  • Hy Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-04-30
  • JavaScript Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-08-05

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

Hy features and specs

  • Python Interoperability
    Hy seamlessly integrates with Python, allowing you to use the entire Python ecosystem while writing your code in a Lisp-like syntax. This interoperability makes it easier for developers familiar with Python to experiment with Lisp's syntax and ideas.
  • Lisp Syntax and Macros
    Hy provides Lisp's powerful macro system and syntax, enabling more expressive and concise code. The ability to create macros can lead to highly customizable and domain-specific solutions.
  • Readability
    For those familiar with Lisp, Hy offers increased readability due to its minimal syntax and symbolic expressions. This can lead to more straightforward reasoning about the code and reduced syntactic noise.
  • Compiles to Python
    Hy code is compiled to Python bytecode, allowing it to run on any environment where Python is available. This ensures good performance and compatibility with existing Python tools and utilities.

Possible disadvantages of Hy

  • Steep Learning Curve
    For developers not familiar with Lisp, Hy's syntax and concepts (like macros) can be difficult to grasp initially. This can slow down development time as developers need to learn new paradigms.
  • Limited Adoption
    Hy is not as widely adopted or supported as some other languages or even other Lisp implementations. This can lead to less community support, fewer third-party libraries written specifically for Hy, and potentially more difficulty finding solutions to problems.
  • Debugging Complexity
    Debugging in Hy can sometimes be more challenging because errors may occur in the compiled Python code rather than the original Hy code, which can complicate traceback and error understanding.
  • Macro Overuse
    While macros are a powerful feature, their misuse can lead to code that is hard to read and maintain. This can become a con if developers do not exercise restraint and best practices in their use.
  • Performance Overhead
    While Hy compiles to Python, the added layer of abstraction and translation may introduce small performance overheads compared to writing natively in Python, especially for performance-critical applications.

JavaScript features and specs

  • 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 of JavaScript

  • 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.

Hy videos

HY-IMPACT muscle massager review (incredible)

More videos:

  • Review - Cleveland Launcher XL Hy-Wood Review
  • Review - HY Extracts (Jack Herer) Review

JavaScript videos

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

More videos:

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

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Hy and JavaScript)
Programming Language
18 18%
82% 82
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 Hy and JavaScript

Hy Reviews

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

JavaScript Reviews

Top 10 Rust Alternatives
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
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 collection of customizable and high-performance widgets that assist in creating cross-platform mobile and web apps, for any type of modernized device.
The 10 Best Programming Languages to Learn Today
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.
Source: ict.gov.ge

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Hy seems to be more popular. It has been mentiond 9 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.

Hy mentions (9)

  • Python's “Disappointing” Superpowers
    Hy: https://docs.hylang.org/en/stable/ I tend to stick to vanilla python though, mainly because Hy is too much of an hassle for my use cases. - Source: Hacker News / over 2 years ago
  • Why Lisp?
    Q: is there any game dev happening in Lisp? A: https://kandria.com/ and https://itch.io/jam/lisp-game-jam-2022 Q: how do I write a website with Lisp? A: https://lispcookbook.github.io/cl-cookbook/web.html#easy-routes-hunchentoot and https://www.gnu.org/software/guile/manual/html_node/Web-Examples.html Q: do I have to use emacs for developing Lisp? A: No, https://github.com/vlime/vlime and... - Source: Hacker News / over 2 years ago
  • How trying new programming languages helped me grow as a software engineer
    I really like Hy because it's fully inter-operable with Python. But its documentation is insufficient for anything moderately complex, and its tooling support is pretty basic. If Hy were well documented and supported I'd use it for all my throwaway scripts and prototyping -- today I use Python for that. Source: over 2 years ago
  • Every programmer ever.
    You're looking for https://docs.hylang.org/en/stable. Source: over 2 years ago
  • Val on Programming: What makes a good REPL?
    I've been using the Hy REPL[0] whenever I've wanted to drop into a python REPL. The lack of whitespace formatting with Hy is great, but it still has access to all of python's libraries. [0] - https://docs.hylang.org/en/stable/. - Source: Hacker News / over 2 years ago
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JavaScript mentions (0)

We have not tracked any mentions of JavaScript yet. Tracking of JavaScript recommendations started around Mar 2021.

What are some alternatives?

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

CLISP - CLISP is a portable ANSI Common Lisp implementation and development environment by Bruno Haible.

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

Steel Bank Common Lisp - Steel Bank Common Lisp (SBCL) is a high performance Common Lisp compiler.

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

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

Rust - A safe, concurrent, practical language