Re: Haskell: functional languages vs Lisp

From: John Thingstad (john.thingstad_at_chello.no)
Date: 05/28/04 

Date: Fri, 28 May 2004 23:12:08 +0200

I am hardly an expert in Haskell, but I have tried it.
My first impression is that is more tedious to work with.
Futher I find the syntax unappealing and almost unreadable.
But peaple are different.
You claim that Haskell provides a cleaner and more succinct syntax.
I have have a hard time understanding what you mean.
As far as I can see only scheem has a cleaner syntax than Common Lisp.
It can't get much simpler and still be turing complete.
I quickly turned back to lisp but if you prefer Hascell then
by all means use it.

On 28 May 2004 06:30:42 -0700, Nelson Marcelino <marcelin7@yahoo.com>
wrote:

> 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. 

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