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| ▲ | asa400 an hour ago | parent | next [-] |
| > the opposite of boring I have to push back on this one, respectfully. Clojure is easily the most boring, stable language ecosystem I’ve used. The core team is obsessed with the stability of the language, often to the detriment of other language values. This attitude also exists among library authors to a significant degree. There is a lot of old Clojure code out there that just runs, with no tweaks needed regardless of language version. Also, you have access to tons of battle tested Java libraries, and the JVM itself is super stable now. I won’t comment on or argue with your other points, but Clojure has been stable and boring for more than a decade now, in my experience. |
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| ▲ | thunky 24 minutes ago | parent [-] | | What I meant by that is the metaprogramming capabilities that often get cited for allowing devs to create their own domain specific "mini languages". To me that's a "creative" way to write code because the end result could be wildly different depending on who's doing the writing. And creativity invites over-engineering, over-abstraction, and hidden costs. That's what I meant by the "opposite of boring". | | |
| ▲ | hatefulheart 14 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | I read comments like these in bewilderment. Have you worked for a company that hasn’t created its own, as you put it “mini language”? Have you worked for a company that doesn’t indulge in over engineering, over abstraction and hidden cost? Do you actually do programming for a job at all? | |
| ▲ | michaelsbradley 15 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | In practice, though, most developers don’t do that. There’s a rule of thumb: write a macro as a last resort. It’s not hard to stick to it. In general, you can go a long, long way with HOFs, transducers, and standard macros before a hand-rolled macro would serve you better. |
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| ▲ | Oreb an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > syntax is hard to read unless you spend a lot time getting used to it That’s pretty much exactly the opposite of how I always felt. Perhaps because I’m not a programmer by education, I always struggle to remember the syntax of programming languages, unless I’m working in them all the time. After I return to a language after working in other languages for a while, I always have difficulties remembering the syntax, and I spend some time feeling very frustrated. Clojure and Lisps more generally are the exception. There is very little syntax, and therefore nothing to remember. I can pick it up and feel at home immediately, no matter how long I’ve been away from the language. |
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| ▲ | Antibabelic an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| The JVM is one of the major selling points of Clojure. You can "write once, run anywhere" and benefit from Java's massive ecosystem, all without having to use a Blub language. Modern JVM implementations are also incredibly fast, often comparable in performance to C++ and Go. |
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| ▲ | thunky an hour ago | parent [-] | | i don't think you're wrong necessarily...but rust, golang, zig, mojo, etc are gaining popularity and imo they wouldn't be if they were JVM languages. | | |
| ▲ | Antibabelic an hour ago | parent [-] | | It's almost as if different tools exist for solving different problems. Clojure is "Lisp on the JVM". That's the core premise behind the language. Rust is a "systems programming language with a focus on type and memory safety". This is an apples-to-oranges comparison. They offer different benefits while providing different drawbacks in return. Their ecosystems are likewise very different, in each case more closely tailored to their particular niche. | | |
| ▲ | thunky 43 minutes ago | parent [-] | | understood, i'm just pointing out that people seem to prefer the apple over the orange. |
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| ▲ | rockyj an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I am a Clojure fan and would love to use it. But you are right, we live in a real world where money talks and most organizations want to see developers as cheap, replaceable commodities. Not to mention in a post AI world, cost of code generation is cheap, so orgs even need even fewer devs, combine all this with commonly used languages and frameworks and you need not worry about - "too valuable to replace or fire". Having said that - there may be a (very) small percentage of orgs which care about people, code crafting and quality and may look at Clojure as a good option. |
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| ▲ | dgb23 38 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > no type safety That's fair if you're looking at it from a performance perspective. Not entirely fair if you look at it from a perspective of wanting fast feedback loops and correctness. In Clojure you get the former via the REPL workflow and the latter through various other means that in many cases go beyond what a typical type system provides. > the opposite of boring It's perhaps one of the most "boring in a good way" languages I ever used. |
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| ▲ | jimbokun 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Most of those seem very subjective with many people having the exact opposite opinion. |
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| ▲ | thunky an hour ago | parent [-] | | yes it's just my opinion. but Clojure's market share is tiny so there must be something to that. it's not even in the top 50 here: https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/. Lisp is 26. | | |
| ▲ | Antibabelic an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | "The TIOBE index measures how many Internet pages exist for a particular programming language." For some reason I doubt this is in any way representative of the real world. Scratch, which is a teaching language for children, bigger than PHP? Which is smaller than Rust? Yeah, these are results you get when you look at the Internet, alright. | | |
| ▲ | thunky 36 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Sure that index isn't great (I think it's basically a regurgitation of Google Trends), but I don't think you're suggesting Clojure is actually a popular language are you? Which is the only point I'm trying to make (that it isn't popular). | | |
| ▲ | Antibabelic 14 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Clojure is reasonably popular as far as programming languages go. It's not difficult to get a job as a Clojure developer, particularly in certain sectors (fintech and healthcare are the heaviest Clojure users). Of course C++, Java, C# and PHP dwarf both Clojure and Rust by several orders of magnitude. |
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| ▲ | embedding-shape an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | If anything, I think that makes Clojure better. Almost no one in the community is doing stuff to serve "lowest common denominator", compared to how most of JS/TS development is being done, which is a breeze of fresh air for more senior programmers. Besides, the community and ecosystem is large enough that there are multiple online spaces for you to get help, and personally I've been a "professional" (employed + freelancing) Clojure/Script developer for close to 7 years now, never had any issues finding new gigs or positions, also never had issues hiring for Clojure projects either. Sometimes "big enough" is just that, big enough :) | | |
| ▲ | thunky 32 minutes ago | parent [-] | | I'm glad it works for you and many others and gives you a good living. Nothing wrong with that. I wasn't trying to attack it or anyone that uses it, just stating why I never warmed up to it and projecting why I think it hasn't become popular. |
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| ▲ | an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
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| ▲ | greekrich92 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Moby Dick is too hard to read. They should make it shorter with a limited vocabulary. |
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| ▲ | Cthulhu_ 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | I kinda get where you're trying to go, but is Moby Dick style writing the best way to convey information? That is, prose is good for entertainment, but less so for conveying information, even less so for exactness. | | |
| ▲ | greekrich92 12 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Point being that things of high quality that are enriching sometimes require an investment |
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