Cardano Co-Founder Reflects on Alternative Path in Cardano’s Development

As a seasoned crypto investor with a strong background in software development, I can’t help but be intrigued by Charles Hoskinson’s recent revelation about his decision to use Haskell instead of Clojure for building the Cardano blockchain platform.


Recently, Charles Hoskinson, the founder of Cardano, disclosed an intriguing detail: He almost constructed the Cardano blockchain platform using Clojure as its programming language. This crucial decision-making point in Cardano’s history resulted in Haskell being selected instead of Clojure for the project.

Key Decision in Programming Language

In my exploration of X with Ktorz from Cardano Foundation, I shared my initial fascination with Clojure, a dynamic and functional dialect of Lisp. Nevertheless, I opted for Haskell over Clojure due to its advantages in the realm of Cloud Haskell and the distinctive features of Liquid Haskell and Agda.

As a crypto investor looking back on my past decisions, I nearly embarked on building Cardano using Clojure. In fact, we had conversations about this possibility with cognitech years ago. However, I ultimately went with Haskell for two reasons: the appeal of Cloud Haskell and my anticipation of utilizing Liquid Haskell/Agda.

— Charles Hoskinson (@IOHK_Charles) May 30, 2024

The compatibility of Cloud Haskell’s distributed computing framework is excellent for blockchain applications. Moreover, Liquid Haskell and Agda offer sophisticated features for formal verification, ensuring the accuracy of codes.

“Imagine the thrill of writing every aspect of Cardano using ClojureScript and ClojureSpec.”

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2024-05-30 19:48