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joeevans1000 2 hours ago

I use both approaches. One thing is that Clojure code bases are comically hard for anyone to mentally parse if they didn't write it. At least the bulk of programmers... like you'll find on an actual team. Great to write, sure, but not useful in terms of onboarding new team members. Clojure programmers are typically great thinkers. And veterans. But if you are actually trying to build a company, then beware. Your handful of expensive brilliant programmers will build something that you can't bring people in to expand or maintain. Also watch out for the fact that the companies making the awesome tools that COULD be used by noobs often keep them closed source (Datomic and, I think here, Rama). They intend for you to hire them as consultants and pay licenses. Which is all fine... except the 2D languages have real open source libraries with huge adoption and ecosystems.

embedding-shape 2 hours ago | parent [-]

I'm not sure I'd call a programmer "brilliant" if they cannot A) make a codebase simple enough for people to contribute to and B) handle the social parts of training someone to get good enough to contribute to the codebase.

joeevans1000 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Agreed. And this is the real miss of much of the Clojure community. There is a handful of amazing people in there pulling 90% of the weight of bringing noobs in to the language. And the rest don't even seem to notice their efforts. Little awards and grants here and there, yes. But the majority don't even care if the language has wider adoption or not. It works for them and that's enough. But many of the successful projects are toy or side project ones. A large number have comically minimal UIs... sub useful in today's world. Quite a few Clojure programmers use 2D languages in their day jobs, only bringing Clojure in for small parts if at all. All of this is a top down vibe. The core team has never meaningfully addressed the terrible error messages the language spits out because they are able to decode the problem themselves. Empathy or concern for noobs or wanting to grow the language seems a far priority for them. The same for the cryptic documentation, seemingly written for themselves at best. Very talented people, mind you... just not concerned with the things that would have caused adoption of their entirely unadopted language (percentagewise).