Clojure vs Elm

Overview

Clojure

Stacks1.9K

Followers1.4K

Votes1.1K

GitHub Stars10.7K

Forks1.5K

Elm

Stacks758

Followers744

Votes319

Clojure vs Elm: What are the differences?

Syntax Differences: Clojure uses Lisp syntax, which is known for its use of parentheses and prefix notation, while Elm uses a more familiar syntax resembling ML languages with a focus on simplicity and readability.
Immutable Data Structures: Clojure favors persistent and immutable data structures, while Elm enforces immutability by design, ensuring that data cannot be mutated.
Concurrent Programming: Clojure provides built-in support for concurrency with its STM (Software Transactional Memory) system, while Elm simplifies concurrent programming through its message-passing architecture for handling state changes.
Type System: Clojure is dynamically and weakly typed, allowing for flexibility but potentially leading to runtime errors, whereas Elm is statically typed, detecting type errors at compile-time and providing more safety and predictability.
Error Handling: Clojure relies heavily on Java's exception handling mechanisms, allowing the mix of functional programming with imperative error handling, while Elm emphasizes declarative error handling through its Result and Maybe types, promoting a more structured approach to dealing with errors.
Compilation: Clojure code is compiled to Java bytecode, running on the JVM, offering interoperability with Java libraries and tools, while Elm compiles to optimized JavaScript, targeting web browsers for front-end development with a strict focus on performance and reliability.

In Summary, Clojure and Elm differ in syntax, approach to data structures, concurrency, type system, error handling, and compilation targets, catering to distinct paradigms of functional programming and emphasizing different aspects of language design.

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Advice on Clojure, Elm

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

Detailed Comparison

Clojure	Elm
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.	Writing HTML apps is super easy with elm-lang/html. Not only does it render extremely fast, it also quietly guides you towards well-architected code.
-	No Runtime Exceptions; Fearless refactoring; Understand anyone's code; Fast and friendly feedback; Enforced Semantic Versioning; Small Assets
Statistics
GitHub Stars 10.7K	GitHub Stars -
GitHub Forks 1.5K	GitHub Forks -
Stacks 1.9K	Stacks 758
Followers 1.4K	Followers 744
Votes 1.1K	Votes 319
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 Good code heavily relies on local conventions 3 Tonns of abandonware	Pros 45 Code stays clean 44 Great type system 40 No Runtime Exceptions 33 Fun 28 Easy to understand Cons 3 No typeclasses -> repitition (i.e. map has 130versions) 2 JS interop can not be async 2 JS interoperability a bit more involved 1 Backwards compability breaks between releases 1 Main developer enforces "the correct" style hard
Integrations
Java	No integrations available

What are some alternatives to Clojure, Elm?

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.

Meteor

A Meteor application is a mix of JavaScript that runs inside a client web browser, JavaScript that runs on the Meteor server inside a Node.js container, and all the supporting HTML fragments, CSS rules, and static assets.

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.

Related Comparisons

Clojure vs Elm: What are the differences?

Syntax Differences: Clojure uses Lisp syntax, which is known for its use of parentheses and prefix notation, while Elm uses a more familiar syntax resembling ML languages with a focus on simplicity and readability.
Immutable Data Structures: Clojure favors persistent and immutable data structures, while Elm enforces immutability by design, ensuring that data cannot be mutated.
Concurrent Programming: Clojure provides built-in support for concurrency with its STM (Software Transactional Memory) system, while Elm simplifies concurrent programming through its message-passing architecture for handling state changes.
Type System: Clojure is dynamically and weakly typed, allowing for flexibility but potentially leading to runtime errors, whereas Elm is statically typed, detecting type errors at compile-time and providing more safety and predictability.
Error Handling: Clojure relies heavily on Java's exception handling mechanisms, allowing the mix of functional programming with imperative error handling, while Elm emphasizes declarative error handling through its Result and Maybe types, promoting a more structured approach to dealing with errors.
Compilation: Clojure code is compiled to Java bytecode, running on the JVM, offering interoperability with Java libraries and tools, while Elm compiles to optimized JavaScript, targeting web browsers for front-end development with a strict focus on performance and reliability.

Clojure vs Elm

Overview