Clean
Oleg
What is the story of Clean? I understand that it had a cult following until
something happened to the company, leaving everyone very upset.
From the description on the web site, Clean seems to be close to Haskell.
What are the key differences?
Considering that Haskell is already more popular, and that GHC is (L)GPLed,
while Clean system is not, what would compel someone to use Clean? (Other
than existing code base)
Thanks
Oleg
--
"It's because they're stupid, that's why. That's why
everybody does everything." -- Homer Simpson.
Siegfried Gonzi
> Hi
>
> What is the story of Clean? I understand that it had a cult following until
> something happened to the company, leaving everyone very upset.
>
> From the description on the web site, Clean seems to be close to Haskell.
> What are the key differences?
>
> Considering that Haskell is already more popular, and that GHC is (L)GPLed,
> while Clean system is not, what would compel someone to use Clean? (Other
> than existing code base)
If you really want to program in a functional style I will always
suggest Clean's fantastic syntax (compare it to the nasty ";", ";;" in
OCaml if you like).
As often otherwise stated I believe that syntax plays really an
important part -- at least for me.
But there is the other black Clean side. I had great problems to use
Clean in a usefull manner. Why? Try to write a number with a specific
precision to a file. Or: reading binary files is easy, but then is there
the option to care whether there is big endian or not (in Python it is
easy to swap the bytes)?
But if you can and will use Clean you should surely go for it.
The price of the Clean system is, under a commercial light of view,
negligible.
They are not Sun/Microsoft/Apple/Intel that they will hunt you to the
last place on earth if you unconsciously infringe some license issues.
You know Common Lisp? There actually only 2 commercial vendors for the
system which provide bigger development environments. LispWorks has a
fairly great price of about US$ 1000.-; but have you ever seen any price
tags concerning AllegroCommon Lisp? Allegro starts at US$ 4000.- and the
professional version costs about US$ 10000.- (no typo) and in addition
one has to pay an extra fee for every program he sells to a client.
I never read licence issues (okay, I am not in a bussines).
S. Gonzi
Terra
> > From the description on the web site, Clean seems to be close to
Haskell.
> > What are the key differences?
> >
>
> If you really want to program in a functional style I will always
> suggest Clean's fantastic syntax (compare it to the nasty ";", ";;" in
> OCaml if you like).
>
But this is NOT the answer to the question: what are the key differences
between Haskell and Clean?
Feuer
way that IO and other imperative stuff is handled. Haskell uses "monadic
IO",
Clean uses "uniqueness types".
Siegfried Gonzi
> But this is NOT the answer to the question: what are the key differences
> between Haskell and Clean?
As I wrote: for me it is syntax. Take it as you want.
S. Gonzi
Siegfried Gonzi
Sorry, messed up things: I had the deep conviction I was referring to
Clean/OCaml. Sorry.
As others wrote monadic input output is not dominant in Clean when one
wants to read a file. I found the Clean way more intuitive.
I think the integration C and Haskell is way lot more better than C and
Clean.
In the 90's a term was dubbed: steering your code. That means you have
got your C and Fortran numerical code but your scripting or functional
language makes then the thinking and applies the code. That is what
Python is all about.
Though, Clean is very fast. If you want your Clean for numerical
computations, you should have a look at Zorner's CLAS implementation.
But be prepared: the type system is always working against you.
And last but not least: the user base is a bit bigger than with Clean.
If you encounter any problems with types and disdain the type checker
you should essentially take a look at Scheme or CommonLisp.
In Scheme or Lisp I write code as fast as in Python.
Regards,
S. Gonzi
Jerzy Karczmarczuk
>
> [omissis]
> > > From the description on the web site, Clean seems to be close to
> > > Haskell. What are the key differences?
> > [Gonzi's comments]
> But this is NOT the answer to the question: what are the key differences
> between Haskell and Clean?
==========
I believe that we will have to CONSIDER SERIOUSLY putting this information
in this newgroups FAQs. Graham?
My three cents, rather disordered. I invite other people here to say
something as well, perhaps one day we will cook-up a comprehensive FAQ...
And please, if I wrote some rubbish below, correct it...
0. They *ARE* very similar, both being lazy, pure functional languages,
and the possible application domains are strongly overlapping. I
strongly suggest to everybody who wants to specialize in the FP
that he/she learn both.
1. There is a visible difference in general philosophy.
- Haskell started as an exploration language, undergoes frequent (even if
small) modifications, its "maintenance" is distributed, there are at
least 3 (OK, 4 if you wish) major implementations, and the documentation
(even if driven by one super-mind) is the result of a community consensus.
- Clean - in its actual instance - was thought as an industrial-strength
programming platform, stable, and changing only in the case of necessity.
(I mean - when the authors feel really unhappy about the status quo, and
they have nothing else to do, which is rather rare...)
There is a cross-breeeding between them, but on quite different levels.
While the authors of Clean profit from time to time from Haskell formal
constructions (notably the superficial appearance of the class system),
some Haskell-oriented people have been fascinated by the powerful and
coherent Clean interfacing library.
Haskell produces/inspires from time to time some offsprings (and - with my
full sincere respect - some bastards): generic Haskell, Polyp, Cayenne,
etc., some really wonderful headache generators, strongly recommended
for all free and ambitious minds. Clean is more application-oriented,
and has a good reputation for being really fast.
We could have read here and elsewhere some critical voices: that it
would be better to concentrate the human effort on one language, instead
of producing two << faux jumeaux >>, if you know what I mean...
I disagree violently with this, and I think that the co-existence, and
the competition between them is good, inspiring, and offering better
support for those who think already on new languages.
2. Thus, there are some design differences. Haskell had since the beginning
the arbitrary-precision Integers, and numeric computations were for too
long considered as something of less importance. This resulted in
somewhat unsatisfactory status of numerically-oriented parts of the
standard library, but it is improving. Clean in these contexts is more
brutal, and seems to optimize better some programs which in Haskell
need some attention of the user (such as avoiding to use Integers, where
Ints suffice; Clean has only "standard" Ints).
Also - for the current implementations - the manipulation of arrays is
more efficient in Clean. (But I haven't done any benchmarking with the
last GHC version...)
The type inference is a bit different, and in general the type systems
*are* different. Haskell system is easier to learn. The status, the relation
between classes and types is a nice, baroque construction.
Clean class system is - apparently - more "plain", the relation between
classes and overloaded functions is more straightforward, but if you look
at some details, it is substantially more complicated, and sometimes
disturbing.
In Haskell a function which takes two arguments and produces a result of
type c has the type a -> b -> c. In Clean you may write it as
a b -> c
which *will* disturb a Haskeller, since it might be understood as a one-
argument function with a being some constructor. Clean shortcuts produce
the effect that the types of
f x y = z x y and
f x = \y -> z x y
are different, while in Haskell it is the same. Some missing or "redundant"
parentheses in the type specification in Clean are far from being inocuous,
*never* try to write the above as (a b) -> c ...
Clean type categoriess are quite rich. Uniqueness, strictness, type
dependence [a=>b] etc. - all this must be studied for many hours in order
to be able to understand some compiler messages and/or to code in the most
efficient way..
3. Some people say "Haskell uses Monads", Clean - uniqueness types for IO
and elsewhere.
Uniqueness type for a variable means that that this variable can be
accessed only in one place within the program. So, if there a new
object is produced from the transformation of the original, and if
this object is also "unique", the program can update in place the
original, yielding the new instance. This cannot be done directly
in Haskell.
In fact, there are people who use Monads in Clean as well. The update-
in-place-; single-thread data processing chains are simply implemented
in Clean at a lower level, while IO Monad in Haskell is primitive. So,
Clean is more universal, permitting to implement more "imperative"
things by the user, while Haskell is "cleaner"...
Clean programs possessing imperative flavour could be quite messy, but
Clean disposes of a syntactic contraption, a kind of sequential "let"
with specific scope rules, permitting to REUSE names:
# (aFile,aFileSystem) = openItInside aFileSystem
# aFile = WriteToItOrDoSomethingElseWith aFile
# aFile = continueToProcess aFile
...
where you don't need to write aNewFile = process aFile, etc. A file
is still unique, because of these sequential scoping rules.
Haskell on the other hand has the "do" block, permitting to write
monadic chains in an imperative style
do
var <- doSomething ...
encore <- doSomethingElseWith var
printSomewhere encore
...
return (whatYou want et encore)
4. A general observation about the use of both languages by a beginner who
wants to learn on examples:
Haskell disposes of two decent interactive interpreters: Hugs and GHCI
permitting to test directly small expression, to ask about their types,
etc. which is often useful for debugging, and for grasping the essentials
on small exercises.
Clean is a compiler which processes the whole program. It has a very decent
interactive interface with make/project options, and plenty of information
produced on the screen by the compiler, but - as in my case - the class
usage is a bit less appropriate. (There are other views as well, I am
not trying to depreciate Clean).
It must be admitted though that neither is really an *interactive* language
like Scheme or Python. In a pure, strongly typed programming framework the
compiler performs a lot of global analysis, which makes the incremental
programming difficult. (In Clean: impossible; in Hugs: awkward - you can
input expressions, but not definitions; in GHCI: possible:
let foo = someThing
useThisFoo foo ...
but this is a monadic construction in disguise...
===================
Now, for the people who asked those questions. Choose whatever you wish,
if your philosophy is "I have no time to learn two languages, only one,
so tell me which one is better", then I have some VERY STRONG statements:
* Whoever says to you "H is *better* that C" (or vice-versa) is LYING.
* If you want to learn FP, you should have a good view on the principal
paradigms, not on particular syntactic constructs. Then, some knowledge
of two different languages is more than helpful.
* Learning of languages is a big adventure and pleasure.
* Here and elsewhere both H and C communities are helpful, people who
know, answer all questions without pretensions nor suggestions that they
are respectful gurus bothered by beginners (which happens too often on
other "language-oriented" newgroups I visited recently...).
Jerzy Karczmarczuk
Caen, France
Terra
> I believe that we will have to CONSIDER SERIOUSLY putting this information
> in this newgroups FAQs. Graham?
>
> My three cents, rather disordered. I invite other people here to say
> something as well, perhaps one day we will cook-up a comprehensive FAQ...
> And please, if I wrote some rubbish below, correct it...
>
[omissis]
A very good description of the differences, thanks a lot.
I started learning Miranda during my computer science studies in Pisa
(Italy), then I discovered Haskell and started using it. I am also a good
C++ programmer, but I use often Haskell when I want to speculate about new
data structures or algorithms, because I find easier to do this work in
Haskell; perhaps my mind is more functional than imperative :)
After all, I will continue to use Haskell for my purposes.
Regards,
RDA
Hannah Schroeter
In article <aghbve$7na$1...@newsmaster.cc.columbia.edu>,
Oleg <oleg_i...@myrealbox.com> wrote:
>[...]
>Considering that Haskell is already more popular, and that GHC is (L)GPLed,
GHC is mostly licenced BSD style, not *GPL.
>[...]
Kind regards,
Hannah.