Distinctive traits of functional programming languages

The landscape of functional programming languages is remarkably diverse, with most of the major families having quite distinctive traits and dialects that bring their own quirks. Here are some of the major categorizations:

  • Evaluation strategy: non-strict (Miranda, Haskell) vs strict evaluation.

  • Type system: static (Standard ML, OCaml, F#, Haskell, Scala, C# 3) vs dynamic (Scheme, Lisp, Clojure, Erlang) typing and untyped (Mathematica).

  • Kind of static typing: structural (OCaml) vs nominal (F#, Haskell, Scala, C# 3) static typing.

  • Type inference: Damas-Milner (Standard ML, OCaml, F#, Haskell) vs "local" inference (Scala, C# 3).

  • Destructuring: pattern matching (Standard ML, OCaml, F#, Haskell, Erlang, Mathematica) vs manual deconstruction (Scheme, Lisp, C#).

  • Extensibility of algebraic types: always closed (Standard ML, Haskell) vs optionally closed (OCaml).

  • Pattern matching: linear (Standard ML, OCaml, Haskell) vs unbounded (F#, Mathematica).

  • Run-time code generation: meta-circular evaluator (Scheme, Lisp, Clojure) vs heterogeneous code generation (F# → CIL) vs nothing (Standard ML, OCaml, Haskell).

  • Macros: unhygenic macros (Common Lisp, OCaml, Template Haskell, Mathematica) vs hygenic macros (Scheme) vs no macros (Standard ML, F#).

  • Standardization: standardized (Standard ML, Haskell 98, Common Lisp, Scheme) vs proprietary (OCaml, F#, GHC Haskell, Erlang, Mathematica).

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