COBOL vs Clojure

Overview

Clojure

Stacks1.9K

Followers1.4K

Votes1.1K

GitHub Stars10.7K

Forks1.5K

COBOL

Stacks130

Followers147

Votes2

COBOL vs Clojure: What are the differences?

## Introduction
This comparison will analyze the key differences between COBOL and Clojure, two distinct programming languages used in software development.

1. **Syntax**: COBOL is a procedural language with verbose syntax, relying heavily on English-like words and structure. In contrast, Clojure is a functional language with a concise and expressive syntax, emphasizing immutability and first-class functions.
   
2. **Paradigm**: COBOL follows a procedural programming paradigm, focusing on sequential code execution and modularity. On the other hand, Clojure follows a functional programming paradigm, emphasizing pure functions, immutability, and data transformation through higher-order functions.

3. **Platform**: COBOL is primarily used in legacy systems, especially in industries like banking and finance, where it has a long history. Meanwhile, Clojure is a modern language that runs on the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) and the Common Language Runtime (CLR), attracting developers interested in concurrency and scalability.

4. **Community and Ecosystem**: COBOL has a smaller community and limited resources for modern development practices, which can make it challenging to find support and tools. Clojure, on the other hand, has a vibrant community that actively contributes libraries, frameworks, and documentation, supporting developers in building robust and innovative solutions.

5. **Type System**: COBOL has a static type system with less flexibility in data manipulation and validation, often requiring explicit declarations and conversions. In contrast, Clojure has a dynamic type system that promotes duck typing and polymorphism, allowing for more flexible and concise code.

6. **Concurrency**: Clojure provides built-in support for immutable data structures and software transactional memory, making it well-suited for concurrent programming. COBOL lacks native concurrency features, requiring developers to implement custom solutions for managing parallel tasks effectively.

In Summary, the key differences between COBOL and Clojure lie in their syntax, programming paradigms, platform compatibility, community support, type systems, and concurrency features.

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Advice on Clojure, COBOL

Fronted

Nov 23, 2020

Decided

We’re a new startup so we need to be able to deliver quick changes as we find our product market fit. We’ve also got to ensure that we’re moving money safely, and keeping perfect records. The technologies we’ve chosen mix mature but well maintained frameworks like Django, with modern web-first and api-first front ends like GraphQL, NextJS, and Chakra. We use a little Golang sparingly in our backend to ensure that when we interact with financial services, we do so with statically compiled, strongly typed, and strictly limited and reviewed code.

You can read all about it in our linked blog post.

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Comments

Prakhar

Feb 7, 2022

Needs adviceon

Java

JavaScript

Kotlin

Basically, I am looking for a good language that compiles to Java and JavaScript(and can use their libraries/frameworks). These JVM languages seem good to me, but I have no interest in Android. Which programming language is the best of these? I am looking for one with high money and something functional.

Edit: Kotlin was originally on this list but I removed it since I had no interest in Android

47.9k views47.9k

Comments

Detailed Comparison

Clojure	COBOL
Clojure is designed to be a general-purpose language, combining the approachability and interactive development of a scripting language with an efficient and robust infrastructure for multithreaded programming. Clojure is a compiled language - it compiles directly to JVM bytecode, yet remains completely dynamic. Clojure is a dialect of Lisp, and shares with Lisp the code-as-data philosophy and a powerful macro system.	COBOL was one of the first programming languages to be standardised: the first COBOL standard was issued by ANSI in 1968. COBOL is primarily used in business, finance, and administrative systems for companies and governments.
Statistics
GitHub Stars 10.7K	GitHub Stars -
GitHub Forks 1.5K	GitHub Forks -
Stacks 1.9K	Stacks 130
Followers 1.4K	Followers 147
Votes 1.1K	Votes 2
Pros & Cons
Pros 118 It is a lisp 101 Concise syntax 100 Persistent data structures 90 jvm-based language 89 Concurrency Cons 11 Cryptic stacktraces 5 Need to wrap basically every java lib 4 Toxic community 3 Tonns of abandonware 3 Slow application startup	Pros 2 Business Oriented Language Cons 2 Extremely long code for simple functions
Integrations
Java	No integrations available

What are some alternatives to Clojure, COBOL?

JavaScript

JavaScript is most known as the scripting language for Web pages, but used in many non-browser environments as well such as node.js or Apache CouchDB. It is a prototype-based, multi-paradigm scripting language that is dynamic,and supports object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles.

Python

Python is a general purpose programming language created by Guido Van Rossum. Python is most praised for its elegant syntax and readable code, if you are just beginning your programming career python suits you best.

PHP

Fast, flexible and pragmatic, PHP powers everything from your blog to the most popular websites in the world.

Ruby

Ruby is a language of careful balance. Its creator, Yukihiro “Matz” Matsumoto, blended parts of his favorite languages (Perl, Smalltalk, Eiffel, Ada, and Lisp) to form a new language that balanced functional programming with imperative programming.

Java

Java is a programming language and computing platform first released by Sun Microsystems in 1995. There are lots of applications and websites that will not work unless you have Java installed, and more are created every day. Java is fast, secure, and reliable. From laptops to datacenters, game consoles to scientific supercomputers, cell phones to the Internet, Java is everywhere!

Golang

Go is expressive, concise, clean, and efficient. Its concurrency mechanisms make it easy to write programs that get the most out of multicore and networked machines, while its novel type system enables flexible and modular program construction. Go compiles quickly to machine code yet has the convenience of garbage collection and the power of run-time reflection. It's a fast, statically typed, compiled language that feels like a dynamically typed, interpreted language.

HTML5

HTML5 is a core technology markup language of the Internet used for structuring and presenting content for the World Wide Web. As of October 2014 this is the final and complete fifth revision of the HTML standard of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The previous version, HTML 4, was standardised in 1997.

C#

C# (pronounced "See Sharp") is a simple, modern, object-oriented, and type-safe programming language. C# has its roots in the C family of languages and will be immediately familiar to C, C++, Java, and JavaScript programmers.

Scala

Scala is an acronym for “Scalable Language”. This means that Scala grows with you. You can play with it by typing one-line expressions and observing the results. But you can also rely on it for large mission critical systems, as many companies, including Twitter, LinkedIn, or Intel do. To some, Scala feels like a scripting language. Its syntax is concise and low ceremony; its types get out of the way because the compiler can infer them.

Elixir

Elixir leverages the Erlang VM, known for running low-latency, distributed and fault-tolerant systems, while also being successfully used in web development and the embedded software domain.

Related Comparisons

COBOL vs Clojure: What are the differences?

## Introduction
This comparison will analyze the key differences between COBOL and Clojure, two distinct programming languages used in software development.

1. **Syntax**: COBOL is a procedural language with verbose syntax, relying heavily on English-like words and structure. In contrast, Clojure is a functional language with a concise and expressive syntax, emphasizing immutability and first-class functions.
   
2. **Paradigm**: COBOL follows a procedural programming paradigm, focusing on sequential code execution and modularity. On the other hand, Clojure follows a functional programming paradigm, emphasizing pure functions, immutability, and data transformation through higher-order functions.

3. **Platform**: COBOL is primarily used in legacy systems, especially in industries like banking and finance, where it has a long history. Meanwhile, Clojure is a modern language that runs on the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) and the Common Language Runtime (CLR), attracting developers interested in concurrency and scalability.

4. **Community and Ecosystem**: COBOL has a smaller community and limited resources for modern development practices, which can make it challenging to find support and tools. Clojure, on the other hand, has a vibrant community that actively contributes libraries, frameworks, and documentation, supporting developers in building robust and innovative solutions.

5. **Type System**: COBOL has a static type system with less flexibility in data manipulation and validation, often requiring explicit declarations and conversions. In contrast, Clojure has a dynamic type system that promotes duck typing and polymorphism, allowing for more flexible and concise code.

6. **Concurrency**: Clojure provides built-in support for immutable data structures and software transactional memory, making it well-suited for concurrent programming. COBOL lacks native concurrency features, requiring developers to implement custom solutions for managing parallel tasks effectively.

In Summary, the key differences between COBOL and Clojure lie in their syntax, programming paradigms, platform compatibility, community support, type systems, and concurrency features.

COBOL vs Clojure

Overview