APL vs PureScript
When comparing APL vs PureScript, the Slant community recommends PureScript for most people. In the question“What are the best (productivity-enhancing, well-designed, and concise, rather than just popular or time-tested) programming languages?” PureScript is ranked 45th while APL is ranked 51st. The most important reason people chose PureScript is:
Has Typeclasses and RankNTypes
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro High-level
No complicated loop processing to apply a function to a array of arrays. Functions are defined in a way that they will typically operate the same way on any number of array dimensions. This, along with the clear syntax, leads to very compact code that can be comprehended in a single line, rather than spread out over many pages.
Pro Iverson award in 2016
Pro Very concise
Pro Clear syntax
There is no operator precedence to memorize, as everything is evaluated right-to-left. E.g., in APL 3*10+3 = 39. You do have to type in some otherwise unusual characters, such as ↓ and ∊, but those are easy enough to pick up -- and they have the advantage of being easily remembered once understood, as they often have some connection to common mathematical symbols.
Pro Terse
You can seriously implement Conway's Game of Life in one line. There's a reason we do algebra with symbols instead of story problems. APL is good as a language of thought, since you can hold entire algorithms in your head at once.
Pro Higher kinded types
Has Typeclasses and RankNTypes
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 efficient code.
Pro Type safety
Compiling should be your first unit test. A tight type system (static and hopefully strong) will catch many logic errors that are often difficult to spot through debugging. In languages like PureScript, if it compiles, it often runs properly.
Pro Pure functional language
You cannot have side effects, unless a function is explicitly defined as so.
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.
Pro Has row polymorphism and extensible effects
Pro FFI
FFI system is quite good and easy to use. You can import functions curried or not curried. Records and arrays use native JS objects and arrays.
Pro Thorough documentation
The Purescript website has fairly thorough documentation for all of the language's features, and the Purescript blog contains several examples of practical usage.
Pro Awesome web frameworks
Thermite (React)
Halogen (VDOM, similar to ELM)
And hit these up with Signals, Isolated/(Managed?) Components, powerful functions and FFI
Cons
Con Hieroglyphics
APL symbols are only used by APL. You have to learn how to type them and how to read them. It doesn't work well with standard text editors , version control systems, search engines, or web forums. This makes it difficult for a beginner to find help.
Con Does not prepare you for most of the practical programming languages of today
While APL does have a strong use in certain areas (mostly mathematically intensive applications), it is a Domain-Specific language. That along with the fact that its syntax is not similar to C-like or other common syntax forms means that learning APL and expecting it to help you with learning other languages is like learning Calculus and expecting it to make English easier.
Con Write-only language
Maybe you can learn to read it with experience. And an interpreter. Reading APL is like reading a college math book. You might have to study a single line for fifteen minutes to understand what it's doing. And that's if you're an expert at APL. This also applies if you wrote it yourself more than a month ago. hopefully you have comments.
Con Flawless diamond
You can't extend the language itself. (J does this better.) Of course, what's built in is quite powerful.
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 getting productive with Purescript.
Con Lack of good IDE/tooling support
Con Documentation not updated
Con Ecosystem not stable
Con Restrictive FFI
Functions exported are all curried, and must be called as such from Javascript. The FFI syntax for importing Javascript functions, while slightly simpler and more readable than UHC/Fay's, means that calls to methods on objects must be wrapped to pass the object explicitly as a parameter.
Con Slow compilation
On large project, for example Halogen