Here’s the Deal

LiveScript vs Hy

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11 1

When comparing LiveScript vs Hy, the Slant community recommends Hy 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?” Hy is ranked 43rd while LiveScript is ranked 67th. The most important reason people chose Hy is:

Hy compiles to Python's abstract syntax trees. Python can import Hy modules, and Hy can import Python modules.

Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking

Common Questions

What are the best (productivity-enhancing, well-designed, and concise, rather than just popular or time-tested) programming languages?

Pros

Pro
Designed for High-level functional code

LiveScript has terse syntax for common functional operations like map, and ships with a library, prelude.ls, with many of the functions most commonly used by functional programmers.

Pro
Good amount of programmer flexibility

There's a huge range of features that can make common tasks faster.

Pro
ECMA 6 Features

It is the declared goal of LiveScript’s creators to track ECMAScript 6. Hence, the language gives you ECMAScript 6 plus type annotations (which are optional).

LiveScript's module syntax is currently a bit behind the ECMAScript 6 specification (something that will be fixed eventually). It supports two module standards: CJS (Node.js) and AMD (RequireJS).

Pro
Fixes coffeescript scoping issues

= is used to declare variables in the current scope, in order to redeclare variables of outer scope := is used. This way bugs are reduced.

Pro
Supported by WebStorm and Visual Studio

Pro
Python interop

Hy compiles to Python's abstract syntax trees. Python can import Hy modules, and Hy can import Python modules.

Pro
Easier to read

Distinguished between arrays (or vectors) and function calls by using [] and (), respectively.

Pro
Copyfree and open source

Uses the MIT (expat) license.

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Cons

Con
Strong functional lean

LiveScript is designed to be a high level functional language. For people who prefer a more imperative approach it can be hard to get used to.

Con
Compiles to unreadable javascript

JSON.stringify(
each(upCaseName)(
sortBy(function(it){
  return it.id;
})(
(function(){
  var i$, ref$, len$, ref1$, j$, len1$, ref2$, results$ = [];
  for (i$ = 0, len$ = (ref$ = table1).length; i$ < len$; ++i$) {
    ref1$ = ref$[i$], id1 = ref1$.id, name = ref1$.name;
    for (j$ = 0, len1$ = (ref1$ = table2).length; j$ < len1$; ++j$) {
      ref2$ = ref1$[j$], id2 = ref2$.id, age = ref2$.age;
      if (id1 === id2) {
        results$.push({
          id: id1,
          name: name,
          age: age
        });
      }
    }
  }
  return results$;
}()))));

No cons yet!