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What are the best Functional languages to learn for web-frontend development?

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The Best 1 of 10 OptionsWhy?

10 Options ConsideredPriceSiteCurrent stable version
The Best
Elm
http://elm-lang.org/0.18
ClojureScript
https://clojurescript.org/1.9
Reason ML
––
F#
http://www.fsharp.org4.1
JavaScript
–
––
See Full List
The Best

Elm

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Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Designed around high-level front-end development

•••
As Elm was designed as a front-end langauge, it has out of the box support for things like DOM-element creation, letting programmers focus on their application logic, rather than implementation details specific to the web.
Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Good documentation

•••
Elm is gaining popularity, somewhat faster than many of the other solutions here. This translates to more code examples, more documentation, and more libraries.
Aubrey
Izem Lavrenti
Vishal Ghadge
Top Pro

Very good way to report compilation errors

•••
Error reporting in Elm is really awesome. It pinpoints exact location in file and also provides hints on what might have gone wrong.
Endi Sukaj
Jeff Smits
Top Pro

Great and simple way to learn Purely Functional Programming

•••
You can try to apply some functional programming ideas in other languages that have an imperative basis, but you haven't seen the real power unless you tried it in the environment of purely functional programming. Elm is a simple language with great learning resources and easy graphical output,...
Laura Kyle
Christian Wywiorski
Top Pro

No run time errors

•••
It's statically typed with type inference so even if you don't write type signatures it won't compile if you try to do something that's impossible (ie try to use an integer as a string).
Alessandro Mencarini
Top Pro

The Elm Architecture

•••
Redux was born as something heavily inspired by the Elm mandated pattern you build apps with.
LuckyBayamanaco
Top Pro

No run-time exceptions

•••
Lack of run-time exceptions makes it easy to produce large swathes of reliable front-end code without drowning in tests.
LuckyBayamanaco
Top Pro

Inferred static typing

•••
ML static typing is great because it's always there, you just choose how explicit you want to be and how much you want the compiler to do.
LuckyBayamanaco
Top Pro

Growing community 

•••
Elm is gaining popularity, somewhat faster than many of the other solutions here. This translates to more code examples, more documentation, and more libraries.
LuckyBayamanaco
Top Pro

Missing Syntactic sugar

•••
Easy to learn, most functions have only one way, not 5 alternatives where you must study where to best use what.
LuckyBayamanaco
Top Pro

Good tooling

•••
All major editors have great support. With Atom for example, Elm plugins are available for linting, formatting, make/compiler support and Elmjutsu will simply overflow you with super useful functions, like navigate to referenced definition and show expression type.
Ben Bals
Top Pro

Super easy refactoring with very helpful compiler errors

•••
In no other language you can refactor so easy without any worries, since the compiler will guide you through. It is like TDD but than compiler-error driven.
NonchalantPassalos
LuckyBayamanaco
Top Pro

Not quite Haskell semantics

•••
Luckily you do not have to learn Haskell to be able to do any Elm. It is meant to be a language that compiles to JavaScript, so for JavaScript programmers (Front end) not for CS students who want to learn as many different algorithms as possible.
Ben Bals
Top Con

Poor Windows support

•••
Few if any of Elm's core contributors are Windows users and breaking bugs are sometimes left for weeks or months.
Yoshiyuki
Alessandro Mencarini
Top Con

Splitting code in smaller modules can be hard

•••
While organising code in a single module is extremely straightforward, when your update functions seep in, new modules building functionality becomes complicated.
Endi Sukaj
Top Con

Adds an additional layer of abstraction

•••
Some users claim that Elm adds an additional layer of abstraction, meaning that it is one more hurdle between the brain and the product.
Adrian Perez
Top Con

No server support

•••
See 11 more Pros & ConsSee 15 more Pros & Cons
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9 Other Options Considered

ClojureScript

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Andris Pelcbergs
Top Pro

Live interactive programming with figwheel 

•••
Figwheel builds your ClojureScript code and hot loads it into the browser as you are coding! Every time you save your ClojureScript source file, the changes are sent to the browser so that you can see the effects of modifying your code in real time.
Andris Pelcbergs
Top Pro

Easy to use existing JavaScript libraries 

•••
Clojure and ClojureScript are designed to be able to interact with their host. So the language by design makes it is easy to use existing JS libraries.
Tim Buckley
Top Pro

Targets Google Closure-ready JavaScript for immense optimizations

•••
Google's Closure Library converts regular JavaScript into a highly optimized form - including dead code analysis/elimination. It can even remove pieces of unused code from 3rd party libraries (eg, if you import jQuery but only use one function, Google Closure includes only that piece).
Monika
tggreene
Top Pro

Simple syntax

•••
Lispness makes ClojureScript trivial to comprehend after an initial learning overhead.
Andris Pelcbergs
Top Pro

Share application logic between browser and Clojure server 

•••
Clojure is also able to run web servers, so one can reap similar benefits to NodeJS in terms of sharing code between client and server.
Endi Sukaj
Ivan Pierre
Top Pro

Can be used with React out of the box

•••
Endi Sukaj
Tory S. Anderson
Top Pro

Excellent tools for web development

•••
ClojureScript has superb wrappers around React.js (see Reagent) that make building single-page apps a breeze. With figwheel, it's a web dev experience unlike any other -- hotloaded code, repl interaction, and instantly reflected changes make good development fun and fast. You can add things li...
Endi Sukaj
Tory S. Anderson
Zack H
Top Pro

Excellent build tools

•••
Both Leiningen and Boot are great build tools that manage code dependencies and deployment.
Jose Figueroa Martinez
Top Pro

The Spec core library

•••
From the creator of Clojure: Spec is a new core library (Clojure 1.9 and Clojurescript) to support data and function specifications in Clojure. Writing a spec should enable automatic: Validation, Error reporting, Destructuring, Instrumentation, Test-data generation and Generative test generation.
Tory S. Anderson
Endi Sukaj
Top Con

Syntax may seem cryptic to people not used to Lisp

•••
Lisp is sometimes called "syntax-less" and this is bewildering to those steeped in Algol-type syntax (Java, Javascript, C, etc). Being a dialect of Lisp, ClojureScript's syntax may seem cryptic and hard to understand for people not used to it. While Lisp has very little syntax compar...
See 8 more ProsSee 8 more Pros

Reason ML

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Monika
schlaumeier
Top Pro

Uses established compiler technology from Ocaml with a tweaked syntax that leans more towards Javascript

•••
Endi Sukaj
schlaumeier
Top Pro

Uses the excellent Bucklescript Ocaml to Javascript transpiler

•••
Monika
schlaumeier
Top Pro

Aims to make the transition from Javascript easier

•••
Despite being a completely different language Javascript programmer will find that the syntax of ReasonML has many familiarities with Javascript.
Know any negative aspects of this option?
See 2 more ProsSee 2 more Pros

F#

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Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Easier transition from other paradigms

•••
Since F# is not a purely functional language, it lends itself to being more easily picked up by programmers that have experience with other paradigms.
Kristaps
schlaumeier
Top Pro

Fable Javascript transpiler creates good readable javascript

•••
schlaumeier
Top Pro

Allows to use the same language for web-frontend and server backend

•••
Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Concise syntax

•••
F#'s syntax tends to be terse while remaining very readable and easy to understand without being a chore to write.
Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Runs on the CLR

•••
Since F# runs on the Common Language Runtime or CLR, it has access to the entire .NET Framework, as well as libraries written in other .NET languages such as C#, VB.NET, and C++/CLI.
Andris Pelcbergs
Top Pro

Natively supported by Visual Studio

•••
This is a .Net language natively supported by Visual Studio. Though it is not as tooled up as C# the support is still substantial. In particular, C# deployment scenarios can be enabled for it with small C# wrapper projects.
Andris Pelcbergs
Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Built-in REPL

•••
Makes it easy to write scripts and explore the language.
Andris Pelcbergs
Top Con

.NET's garbage collection is slow

•••
See 6 more ProsSee 6 more Pros

JavaScript

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Abdullah Hilson
Top Pro

Native support in browser

•••
Aluan Haddad
Top Pro

First-class functions with lexical closures

•••
While certainly not the only language with these features, this pro alone is so powerful that it compensates for most of JavaScript's problems. You'll learn to use closures and higher-order functions well in JavaScript, because you have to. And then you can generalize this knowledge to any...
SociableDerzelas
Top Pro

Required for web development

•••
If you are looking to create web projects, you will have to learn Javascript in order to develop the client side code. If you learn the foundations of programming in JavaScript you can reapply that education later in building web applications.
Aluan Haddad
Top Pro

Powerful syntactic support for value oriented programming

•••
While writing in a mutable style is easy in JavaScript, writing in an immutable style has now become effortless with the advent of features such as Object Rest/Spread. These make it as easy, if not easier, to create new values as it is to modify existing one. Users of TypeScript or Flow that adopt...
Aluan Haddad
Top Con

No syntactic or standard library support for value semantics

•••
Especially unfortunate for those writing in a functional/value-oriented style is that JavaScript objects are compared by reference when using === and when performing lookups in arrays, maps, and sets.
See 3 more ProsSee 3 more Pros

Scala

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Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Immutable values

•••
The immutable values make it perfect for working with concurrency.
Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Type inference

•••
Scala offers type inference, which, while giving the same safety as Java's type system, allows programmers to focus on the code itself, rather than on updating type annotations.
Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Multiparadigm

•••
Scala supports both Functional and Object Oriented styles of programming. Beginners can learn both paradigms without having to learn a new language, and experts can switch between the two according to what best suits their needs at the time.
thermoplastics
ingenue
Top Pro

Compiles to JavaScript

•••
Since we are talking about web frontends and because of the popularity of single page applications, Scala also compiles to JavaScript (search for Scala-JS).
Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Compiles to JVM bytecode

•••
Aside from Java itself, Scala is by far the most popular of the many JVM languages. If you're developing for Android, or a similar JVM-only platform, or otherwise need out-of-the-box cross-platform compatibility, but the performance of a compiled language, Scala is the way to go.
Endi Sukaj
Top Con

Can be intimidating for beginners

•••
Scala is an industrial language. It brings functional programming to the JVM, but not with a "start small and grow the language" perspective, but rather a very powerful language for professional programmers.
See 4 more ProsSee 4 more Pros

OCaml

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Endi Sukaj
schlaumeier
Top Pro

Supports multi-paradigm development

•••
Ocaml is a very strong functional programming language but also supports some object oriented programmig technics
schlaumeier
Top Pro

Encourages functional style

•••
It steers you towards a functional style, but doesn't bother you with purity and "monads everywhere" like other languages, such as Haskell.
Kristaps
schlaumeier
Top Pro

Uses one of the best transpilers

•••
It comes with Bucklescript, which currently is one of the best Javascript transpilers.
schlaumeier
Top Pro

Established technology

•••
schlaumeier
Top Pro

Strong editor integration

•••
The merlin editor tool provides all you need to develop OCaml in your favourite editor.
schlaumeier
Top Pro

One of the best for writing compilers

•••
OCaml is compiled to native binary, so it's amazingly fast. Being a member of ML-family languages, it has expressive syntax for trees, and has great LLVM support.
schlaumeier
Top Pro

Sophisticated and easy-to-use package manager

•••
OPAM is a package manager for OCaml, which is really easy to use, just like npm. It creates a .opam folder in home directory. The documentation is great as well, and you can switch between multiple versions of OCaml for each project. You can also package your project and publish it on OPAM reposi...
Monika
schlaumeier
Top Pro

Easier transition from other programming languages

•••
Ocaml supports functional but also object-oriented and procedural programming.
Kristaps
schlaumeier
Top Con

Not very strong support for concurret / parallel development for the backend

•••
This is in the moment meaningless for web frontend development. However it has relevance for the server backend development where concurrency is an advantage. Backends can definately be developed in Ocaml but lack of good concurrency support is a Con compared to other canguages. And as it is often...
Endi Sukaj
Kristaps
schlaumeier
Top Con

Some small strange quirks in the syntax

•••
It uses +. instead of + for floating point additions (and -. *. /. etc), which is easy to get used to, but it's not quite clear what it's supposed to be good for.
See 8 more Pros & ConsSee 8 more Pros & Cons

Purescript

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Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

High performance FFI code

•••
The Eff monad, which is used for FFI code, optimizes out calls to bind, and supports tail call optimization, resulting in clean, efficient Javascript. The psc compiler also specifically recognizes the ST monad, and transforms scoped variables into mutable Javascript variables, for even more efficie...
Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Modules can be compiled to CommonJS

•••
Modules compiled to CommonJS can be included with 'require', making it incredibly simple to call Purescript code from Javascript.
Endi Sukaj
Top Con

Lots of dependencies needed to get started

•••
Purescript is written in Haskell, but meant to be used with Node.js. As a result, to get started , users must install ghc, cabal, node.js, grunt, and bower. Purescript also has its own compiler, and different semantics form Haskell, and so even after installing, there's still some overhead to g...
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Haskell

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Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Terse

•••
Haskell is a very terse language, particularly due to its type inference. This means there's nothing to distract from the intent of the code, making it very readable. This is in sharp contrast to languages like Java, where skimming code requires learning which details can be ignored. Haskell...
Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Mathematical consistency

•••
As Haskell lends itself exceedingly well to abstraction, and borrows heavily from the culture of pure mathematics, it means that a lot more code conforms to very high-level abstractions. You can expect code from vastly different libraries to follow the same rules, and to be incredibly self-consiste...
Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Highly transferable concepts

•••
Haskell's referential transparency, consistency, mathematics-oriented culture, and heavy amount of abstraction encourage problem solving at a very high level, The fact that this is all built upon little other than function application means that not only is the thought process, but even concre...
Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Referentially Transparent

•••
Haskell's Purely Functional approach means that code is referentially transparent. This means that to read a function, one only needs to know its arguments. Code works the same way that expressions work in Algebra class. There's no need to read the whole source code to determine if there...
Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Very few language constructs

•••
The base language relies primarily on function application, with a very small amount of special-case syntax. Once you know the rules for function application, you know most of the language.
Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Quick Feedback

•••
It's often said that, in Haskell, if it compiles, it works. This short feedback loop can speed up learning process, by making it clear exactly when and where mistakes are made.
Enis BAYRAMOĞLU
Top Pro

Forces you to learn pure functional programming

•••
It is pure and does not mix other programming paradigms into the language. This forces you to learn functional programming in its most pure form. This avoids you falling back on old habits and learn an entirely new way to program.
Endi Sukaj
Top Con

Steep learning curve

•••
Haskell lends itself well to powerful abstractions - the result is that even basic, commonly used libraries, while easy to use, are implemened using a vocabularly that requires a lot of backround in abstract mathematics to understand. Even a concept as simple as "combine A and B" is ofte...
schlaumeier
Top Con

You have to learn more than just FP

•••
Haskell is not only a functional language but also a lazy, and statically typed one. Not only that but it's almost necessary to learn about monads before you can do anything useful.
Endi Sukaj
Top Con

Language Extensions lead to unfamiliar code

•••
Haskell's language extensions, while making the language incredibly flexible for experienced users, makes a lot of code incredibly unfamiliar for beginners. Some pragmas, like NoMonomorphismRestriction, have effects that seem completely transparent in code, leading beginners to wonder why it...
Endi Sukaj
Top Con

Symbols everywhere

•••
Haskell allows users to define their own infix operators, even with their own precedence. The result is that some code is filled with foreign looking operators that are assumed to be special-case syntax. Even for programmers who know they're just functions, operators that change infix preceden...
Endi Sukaj
Top Con

Delayed Results

•••
Haskell's static typing, while helpful when building a project, can be positively frustrating for beginners. Quick feedback for errors means delaying the dopamine hit of code actually running. While in some languages, a beginner's first experience may be their code printing "Hello Worl...
Endi Sukaj
Top Con

Lazily Evaluated

•••
Haskell's lazy evaluation implies a level of indirection - you're not passing a value, you're passing a thunk. This is often difficult to grasp not just for beginners, but for experienced programmers coming from strictly evaluated languages. This also means that, since for many, strict...
See 11 more Pros & ConsSee 11 more Pros & Cons

Haste

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Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Generates small, reasonably performant code

•••
Haste generates a small amount of JavaScript which usually performs well.
Endi Sukaj
Jean-Philippe Bernardy
Top Pro

Based on GHC frontend

•••
So all syntax and type system extensions are supported.
Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Client and Server as the same application

•••
Haste was designed to allow both the client and server to be written as parts of the same, type-safe application. This is in stark contrast to most other options, where the client and server are considered two separate entities, resulting in extra manual validation code and more chances for type er...
Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Almost full power of Haskell

•••
Haste supports the Haskell 2010 standard except for Template Haskell as well as most GHC extensions.
Endi Sukaj
Top Con

Lacks some minor Haskell functionality

•••
Lacks support for Template Haskell for example.
See 3 more ProsSee 3 more Pros
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174 Community Recommendations

schlaumeier
Paul Burt
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Mario T. Lanza
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+115
Request recommendations from the community
Jared M. Smith
Jared
Contributor for 3 years
11
Total 
Recs.
1.2K
Total 
Karma
Elm
Recommended 3 months ago
Elm helps me enjoy programming again while creating safe, fast web apps. It's easier to work with a team in Elm where refactoring is easy and fast than in JavaScript where refactoring is scary without near-complete code testing coverage.
Pro
 Great and simple way to learn Purely Functional Programming
Pro
 Designed around high-level front-end development
Pro
 Good documentation
Pro
 Very good way to report compilation errors
Pro
 No run time errors
Pro
 The Elm Architecture
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LuckyBayamanaco
LuckyBayamanaco
Contributor for 3 months
1
Total 
Recs.
335
Total 
Karma
Elm
Recommended 3 months ago
Enjoy front-end development again by removing JavaScript fatigue, improving product quality, and making business logic easier to implement.
Pro
 Great and simple way to learn Purely Functional Programming
Pro
 Designed around high-level front-end development
Pro
 Good documentation
Pro
 Very good way to report compilation errors
Pro
 No run time errors
Pro
 The Elm Architecture
Pro
 No run-time exceptions
Pro
 Inferred static typing
Pro
 Growing community 
Pro
 Missing Syntactic sugar
Pro
 Good tooling
Pro
 Not quite Haskell semantics
See full
Webdev Tory Anderson
Webdev
Contributor for 2 years
6
Total 
Recs.
905
Total 
Karma
ClojureScript
Recommended 2 months ago
Lisp has a little learning curve because it is so different -- but the syntax is so minimal and elegant that writing becomes sheer joy. Add to the fact that there is superb tooling around Clojurescript (especially Figwheel) and you have a true winner. For me, the most rewarding part of working with all flavo...
Pro
 Targets Google Closure-ready JavaScript for immense optimizations
Pro
 Simple syntax
Pro
 Live interactive programming with figwheel 
Pro
 Easy to use existing JavaScript libraries 
Pro
 Share application logic between browser and Clojure server 
See full
Currently displaying 3 out of 174 total recommendations.
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