Updated April 10, 2023
Difference Between Lisp vs Haskell
The following article provides an outline for Lisp vs Haskell. Lisp is also a programming language after Fortran, it is an high level programming language with long history. Lisp was introduced in year 1958 by John McCarthy. This language can deal and process symbolic information efficiently hence it is very useable for Artificial Intelligence programming. It comes up with many features out of which one of them is it is machine independent which make it good choice. On the other hand Haskell is also a general purpose programming language but it is a functional programming language, it also based on the lambda calculus. It was launched in 1990. If we write a program in Haskell it will always represent in the form of mathematical functions, these function have their benefits.
Head to Head Comparison Between Lisp vs Haskell (Infographics)
Below are the top 11 differences between Lisp vs Haskell:
Key Difference Between Lisp vs Haskell
Let us discuss some of the major key differences between Lisp vs Haskell:
- Lisp is a general purpose programming language, which is commonly popular in Artificial Intelligence ML (machine learning) and other advance programming logic. Lips comes up with good support for control statement as well, which again a makes it great choice for AI.
- Lips basically stands for list processing, this name is because it uses list data structure to represent its data.
- On the other hand we have Haskell it is purely a function programming language. Function written in Haskell based on the mathematical functions which provide benefits to have less error.
It provide various benefits if we use this language which are described below:
- If we written any application in Haskell it will provide us high reliability and less error.
- By using this we can increase the productivity of the developer.
- Code written in Haskell is easy to read, undatable, easy to maintain and also very much clear as well.
Some basic and advance features provide by the lisp programming which are mentioned as below:
- Lips programming language provide and support advanced object oriented programming approaches.
- As it is an high level programming language which provide good support for debugging as well.
- One of the main benefit or feature of lisp is it is machine independent, does not depended on machine characteristics.
- As we know Haskell is pure functional programming whereas Lips is expression based language.
- This programming language uses and provide iterative methodology.
- By the use of this we can update and make modification to the program dynamically.
- Also provide support for control structures.
- Haskell is a functional programming as we already know now so this provide the advantage of ease of maintenance and also high modifiability in the application. One more advantage Haskell provide is that if you want to developed specification or prototype in Haskell so this can be easily executed, debugged and tested as well.
Example #1: Lisp
Let’s take an sample example to understand how we can write program in Lisp.
This is a sample program to show its syntax, here we are performing addition of number, also trying to print some random message by suing function write-line in LISP.
Code:
(write (+ 100 200 300 40 5))
(write-line " ")
(write-line " Start ***********")
(write-line "Hello World from LISP")
(write-line "Sample program in LISP for understanding !!")
(write-line " End **********")
Output:
Example #2: Haskell
Simple syntax to print any string in Haskell using putStrLn function in Haskell.
Syntax:
main = putStrLn "i am string in haskell language"
Output:
Lisp vs Haskell Comparison Table
Let’s discuss the top comparison between Lisp vs Haskell:
| Lisp | Haskell |
| Lisp is an general purpose dynamic programming language. which comes up with advanced object oriented approach. | On the other hand Haskell is an strictly typed programming language. In short we can say it is an functional programming language. |
| Since it is machine independent, and does not depend on the machine characteristics. | Haskell is strictly typed language like java, c, c++ so it is very easy to check the error at compile time only. |
| We have some list of applications which are developed and written in Lisp such as: Yahoo Store, AutoCad, G2 etc. | On the other hand Haskell is used by Wagon, thought-out and DoxIQ. |
| This language is useful with artificial intelligence programming because it deals with symbolic information very well. | Haskell based on the lambda calculus, also every function we written in Haskell is a mathematical function, which leads to less error. |
| Lisp programming language was released in 1958 by John McCarthy, it is the second oldest programming language. | Haskell stable release was come in year 2010 designed by Paul Hudak. |
| Lisp is majorly used is machine learning, artificial intelligence, advance programming etc. | Functional programming language are more and more concurrent, hence provide better performance as well. |
| Lisp also support wide data types which includes, list, array, vector, hash tables, object etc. | On the other hand Haskell can be used to design and handle list processing and symbolic computation applications. |
| As we already know that Lisp stand for list processing, which commonly means that it uses list as its primary data structure. | Some of the features which are provide by Haskell which make it better choice to use over Java, C and other programming like:
modularity, laziness, functional language, maintainability etc. |
| One of its features include wide support for control structure which makes it good choice for artificial intelligence. | On the other hand Haskell has been developed to handle the multithreading very effectively. |
| In lisp program we usually do not follow procedural steps rather we apply functions on data. | It is based on lambda calculus and mathematical function. |
| In Lisp we use list data structure to represent our data. Lisp programming language comes up with several dialects such as COMMON LISP and SCHEMA, which again makes it good choice for AI here. | We have three types of installer available for Haskell to be installed on the machine. Which area as:
Haskell plattform , Stack installer, Minimal installer. |
Conclusion
As we discussed in the article both language have some advantage and disadvantages over one another. One of them is functional programming based on lambda calculus and other one is general purpose programming language used for symbolic information processing. Both have their own benefits which can be used according to the requirement.
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This is a guide to Lisp vs Haskell. Here we discuss the Lisp vs Haskell key differences with infographics and comparison table respectively. You may also have a look at the following articles to learn more –
