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Comment by wtf_is_up | Hacker News Reader

> I am looking for a replacement programming language to solve small problems for which Python/Ruby would have traditionally been used, good file system, stream and networking APIs, but concurrency as a first class citizen, garbage collected, fast startup time.

You just described Go, mostly. I can't think of a more fitting language given your stated requirements.

To your first point: I don't know what Go has to do with your preference of functional programming to imperative. Go doesn't claim to be a functional language so I just am not seeing the connection.

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Yes, I did describe what Go is good at, that's because I am trying to find something to put it against for what I use it for currently.

Let's say I prefer Haskell's syntax/approach. Coming from Go, what could I be missing in Haskell?

> solve small problems for which Python/Ruby would have traditionally been used, good file system, stream and networking APIs, but concurrency as a first class citizen, garbage collected, fast startup time

I think for the most part, you won't be missing a lot in Haskell. If you are looking for what you say above, Go should satisfy your needs greatly. Haskell is amazing for functional programming needs - fast prototyping and great at doing mathematical calculations. It helps you think in another way, but I certainly wouldn't use it for building something like an API or networking.

While it's kind of off-topic, let me still ask: what are the problems you see in using Haskell for networking? I see that building a library with the C calling convention might be hard, but a web service must be pretty language-agnostic.

I'm not sure why the xasos says that. For me Haskell has been great for apis. Regarding calling C, the Haskell ffi is very easy to use.

Try Nim, Ocaml, or Haskell to replace Go in that order. I order it in terms of probable familiarity.

Calling C is easy. Calling from C might be not.

I quite like F# - it's similar to Haskell, but since it's a .NET language, you have an extensive STL and tons of 3rd party libraries. It works great with C#, so you can switch between functional and OO programming depending on your domain, while keeping the same STL and technology stack.

Also, you get the full power of Visual Studio (they recently changed it to be completely free), which can really help with productivity in my experience.

Fast compile times, for one.

The ability to easily solve problems Go was made to solve (mainly, server programs and OS utilities). Those problems are, often, inherently easier to express with an imperative style (because they deal a lot with the external, imperative world and all its nasty aspects).

You might also loose the ability to know how much memory and time a given task requires at most, which can be a problem when dealing with servers (it's much harder to know how many requests you will be able to serve per second or how long a given request will take to be treated, for instance).

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