> Programming language syntax scarcely matters. It does to some extent but we the programmers tend to over-romanticize it. The runtime and its properties are the much better thing to optimize for.

I'm not sure I understand this argument. Java and Clojure share a runtime, but an idiomatic Java codebase is going to have a very different architecture and design to an idiomatic Clojure codebase. Conversely, a codebase written in Go may end up looking very similar to a codebase written in Java, despite using different runtimes.

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pdimitar 2 hours ago | parent [-]

I mean runtime guarantees and features. In this case: effortless / near-invisible concurrency and parallelism.

As mentioned, I did like Clojure. I'd switch to it if it was running inside the Erlang runtime (like Elixir does).

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weavejester an hour ago | parent | next [-]

To be clear, I'm not questioning your choice of runtime or language. I'm just curious why you think that "Programming language syntax scarcely matters", as to me that seems the same as saying "How a codebase is architectured and designed scarcely matters".

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pdimitar an hour ago | parent [-]

I don't see how the latter follows from the former? The former is much bigger and more abstract; syntax is just one of the vehicles to try and codify it.

F.ex. if you have an universal construct of green threads / fibers then 7 PLs could express it 7 different ways, yet underneath they'd all be the same.

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weavejester an hour ago | parent [-]

The programming language informs the design of the system. As I said in my earlier comment, an idiomatic Java codebase is going to be designed very differently to an idiomatic Clojure codebase, even if they both intend to solve the same problem.

	▲	pdimitar 17 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		But that's still not a function of the syntax per se; Java has no immutability encoded in its runtime, hence it does not offer it as a syntax either.

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jerf an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

I can't endorse it because I've never used it, but: https://zread.ai/clojerl/clojerl/12-clojure-to-erlang-code-g...