Elixir vs. Java vs. Racket vs. WebAssembly Comparison Chart

Elixir is a dynamic, functional language for building scalable and maintainable applications. Elixir leverages the Erlang VM, known for running low-latency, distributed, and fault-tolerant systems. Elixir is successfully used in web development, embedded software, data ingestion, and multimedia processing, across a wide range of industries. Check our getting started guide and our learning page to begin your journey with Elixir. All Elixir code runs inside lightweight threads of execution (called processes) that are isolated and exchange information via messages. Due to their lightweight nature, it is not uncommon to have hundreds of thousands of processes running concurrently in the same machine. Isolation allows processes to be garbage collected independently, reducing system-wide pauses, and using all machine resources as efficiently as possible (vertical scaling). Processes are also able to communicate with other processes running on different machines in the same network.

Racket is a general-purpose, multi-paradigm programming language that serves as a modern dialect of Lisp and a descendant of Scheme. It is designed as a platform for programming language design and implementation, enabling developers to create new domain-specific and general-purpose languages. Racket's core language includes features such as macros, modules, lexical closures, tail calls, delimited continuations, parameters (fluid variables), software contracts, green threads, and OS threads. The language also comes with primitives, such as event spaces and custodians, which control resource management and enable the language to act like an operating system for loading and managing other programs. Further extensions to the language are created with the powerful macro system, which, together with the module system and custom parsers, can control all aspects of a language. Most language constructs in Racket are implemented as macros in the base language.