Haskell: functional languages vs Lisp

From: Nelson Marcelino (marcelin7_at_yahoo.com)
Date: 05/28/04 

Date: 28 May 2004 06:30:42 -0700

I am curious to know what advantages does Lisp have over Haskell. As
far as I know the Haskell Prelude as well as its modules implement
most of the functionality that lisp provides but with a much cleaner
and succinct syntax.
Furthermore, Paul Hudak claims that lisp is not based on lambda
calculus (as many people think) and is not a true functional language;
therefore in some instance this can make formal verification of lisp
programs difficult. I am aware that lisp has many great features such
as multiple programming paradigms, that it is extensible, adaptable,
and that it takes a pragmatic view to many things. However providing
multiple ways to accomplish something such as providing 20 different
ways to do looping seems very confusing. Why not have just one or two
standard looping methods to accomplish something?
Lisp provides many flow of control constructs with branching and
execution of different sections of programming code -- the (cond)
construct is an example.

With languages like Haskell flow of control is not an issue.
Equational reasoning promotes a declarative style of program
implementation and allows such things as parallel proccessing to be
implicit.

I would like to know what people think of newer languages such as Lisp
OCAML SML
and how they compare to Lisp. Also functional programming contests
held each year allow any language to compete. And it always seems that
languages such as OCAML, Haskell, Dylan etc alls fare well where other
languages such as Lisp never make it to the semifinals. Paul Graham
says he is creating a new language called Arc. Apparently there are
some things about lisp that he does not like. But I don't think Graham
knows about some of the newer functional languages.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: LISPPA
    ... >> a match for such imperative languages as C, ... >comparing Lisp with languages like C, Pascal and Basic, ... I can accept that Lisp tries to compensate of the lack of compile-time ... If you have tools of visual programming, nice editor, advanced ...
    (comp.lang.lisp)
  • Re: How Common Lisp sucks
    ... I could list some web servers written in Common Lisp. ... If a programming infrastructure fails ... underpinning than the p* languages. ...
    (comp.lang.lisp)
  • Re: LISPPA
    ... >> memory resources. ... > do in Common Lisp with code that runs about as fast. ... in "weaks languages": iteration instead of recursion and "local" ... I'm programming in Pascal since 1990 year, ...
    (comp.lang.lisp)
  • Re: Newbie Question: Is it allowed for the function to change the value of parameters?
    ... functional programming with side ... Typical Lisp code doesn't use Lambda to wrap all the imperative stuff into a referentially transparent framework. ... Haskell is different in that respect. ... now that's something that isn't directly representable in a compiled language. ...
    (comp.lang.functional)
  • When static typing is worth it
    ... typed languages like Lisp. ... developed more quickly in modern statically typed languages than ... static type system and remove run-time checks. ... incurs a run-time error if the list is ...
    (comp.lang.lisp)