Add to Chrome
Add to Edge
Add to Firefox
Add to Opera
Add to Brave
Add to SafariWhen comparing Haskell (via GHCJS) vs ElixirScript, the Slant community recommends ElixirScript for most people. In the question“What are the best languages that compile to JavaScript? ” ElixirScript is ranked 26th while Haskell (via GHCJS) is ranked 28th. The most important reason people chose ElixirScript is:
Uncluttered, yet unambiguous syntax
Question Ranking
Pros
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's terseness also lends itself to very clear inline examples in textbooks, and makes it a pleasure to read through code even on a cellphone screen.
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.
Pro All of Haskell, with the same tools you're used to
No need to learn new syntax or semantics, and no need to install and learn a bunch of new tools - it's just GHC.
Pro Provides seamless concurrency, without the need for promises or callbacks
Pro Built-in REPL which lets you interact with your GHCJS compiled web page
Pro Clear syntax
Uncluttered, yet unambiguous syntax
Pro Great for concurrency
Leverages the existing Erlang BEAM VM
Pro Excellent community
The Elixir community has proved to be welcoming and very supportive.
Pro More familiar syntax
All of the benefits of Erlang; without as steep a learning curve of prolog based syntax. Elixir is heavily inspired by Ruby's syntax which many people love.
Pro Great documentation
Elixir's documentation is very good. It covers everything and always helps solving any problem you may have. It's also always available from the terminal.
Cons
Con The generated code can be difficult to debug
It should be mentioned that since the execution model of Haskell is very different from common imperative languages (lazy evaluation), the generated code doesn't resemble the source code at all, so it can be very difficult to debug.
Con Large runtime
GHCJS supports the entire Haskell runtime, the Javascript it outputs tends to be quite large. This is in contrast to options such as Fay, which save some overhead by not supporting some features such as multi-threading.
