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Is Clojure dying, and what has Ruby got to do with it?

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Re: Is Clojure dying, and what has Ruby got to do with it?

#31

Post by boubiyeah »

modularfurnitur wrote: post #26

I think Clojurescript might be the thing. With advances in the Google Closure compiler, it's getting better and better. And the front end developer tools and libraries in Clojurescript are _the best_ out there. The holy grail for javascript exists in Clojurescript. Until then I'll keep making my Javascript env look like Clojurescript. With janky react devcards, Immutable.js, and react-redux.

Well, clojure is better designed than javascript, that's for sure. But the holy grail for me would absolutely need static typing.

Re: Is Clojure dying, and what has Ruby got to do with it?

#32

Post by indigo0086 »

graphememes wrote: post #24
bitwize wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Use Emacs and optionally avail yourself of a structural editing mode like paredit. Then, at a minimum, the editor will help you match parens and you barely even have to think about them. Seriously, get over your Emacs hate (if you have any) because Emacs is to Lisp family languages what IntelliJ is to Java.

I don't hate emacs, I have however invested a lot more time and work into vim than emacs so that is why I do not use it.

I use spacemacs. before I had to have a vim plugin in every ide. But seeing the incredible power of emacs and the ease of integrating vim with it (pretty much a "pick your style" at the beginning of spacemacs installation) I'll never go back.

Re: Is Clojure dying, and what has Ruby got to do with it?

#33

Post by ledgerdev »

modularfurnitur wrote: post #26

I think Clojurescript might be the thing. With advances in the Google Closure compiler, it's getting better and better. And the front end developer tools and libraries in Clojurescript are _the best_ out there. The holy grail for javascript exists in Clojurescript. Until then I'll keep making my Javascript env look like Clojurescript. With janky react devcards, Immutable.js, and react-redux.

Agreed. I suspect one current thing hurting adoption from the JS community is the very heavy JVM based tooling. With the Google Closure compiler now running on top of JS, there would seem to be a path for the CLJS(not clj) tooling to become more JS ecosystem friendly.

For the JS developers out there, is this something that's of interest? Or is the existing tooling(lein) good enough? What would be your ideal tooling story?

Re: Is Clojure dying, and what has Ruby got to do with it?

#34

Post by dragandj »

swannodette wrote: post #22
Grue3 wrote: post #19

Is Ruby supposed to be an example of "not dying" language? Because it has certainly passed its glory days as well. Also Common Lisp is better in every way ;) There's even a JVM implementation (ABCL) for people who like that sort of stuff.

I don't know but it seems to me Ruby is dying the same way anything else with 200,000+ questions on Stack Overflow is dying (i.e. it isn't).

David, you have to put more bugs in ClojureScript - we need way more questions on StackOverflow ASAP! :)

Re: Is Clojure dying, and what has Ruby got to do with it?

#35

Post by flavio81 »

Grue3 wrote: post #19

Is Ruby supposed to be an example of "not dying" language? Because it has certainly passed its glory days as well. Also Common Lisp is better in every way ;) There's even a JVM implementation (ABCL) for people who like that sort of stuff.

True, Common Lisp is better in every way, but still Clojure has its uses (in my opinion, mainly when you need to interact with a lot of Java libraries and don't want to submit to the sadism of the Java language.)

Also, the more Clojure users out there, the more people are potentially able to "jump" to the other Lisps like Racket, Arc, Scheme, and CL.

Re: Is Clojure dying, and what has Ruby got to do with it?

#36

Post by jakebasile »

I really hope it isn't dying since it's by far the most pleasant language I've ever worked in. Now that I've spent enough time on it I'd very much like to use it for the rest of my career. I suppose if it does die out there are other Lisps available despite the claim that Lisp is dead.

Re: Is Clojure dying, and what has Ruby got to do with it?

#38

Post by frou_dh »

protomyth wrote: post #9

I do wonder how much the purchase of Sun (Java) by Oracle and/or the slow down in Java advancement has affected those languages that a primarily hosted on the JVM.

I always thought the Java tie-in was a double-edged sword. For some potential Clojure users, in addition to learning the language they were interested in, they'd also have to half-learn a language (and its tooling) that they probably weren't interested in.

I guess in the US there is/was an assumption that everyone coming out of the computing education system is already experienced with Java.

Re: Is Clojure dying, and what has Ruby got to do with it?

#39

Post by flavio81 »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #4
graphememes wrote: post #2

I'm still left with the question of "why all the parenthesis?" While it might sound silly and reductionist, it is ostensibly the single hurdle I could never overcome when it came to lisp languages. The majority resides with the fact that it could work without them, so I see it as an ancient artifact.

There seems to be a very nice solution to the parenthesis problem: https://sourceforge.net/p/readable/wiki/Home/ I have no idea why it hasn't caught on. As far as I'm aware, there's no Clojure implementation. Lispers like their parentheses.

(we) lispers LOVE our parentheses.

"Elegant weapons... for a more civilized age."

Ref: https://xkcd.com/297/

Re: Is Clojure dying, and what has Ruby got to do with it?

#40

Post by tanilama »

daxfohl wrote: post #6

Going further, it seems like the whole category of alternative languages hit a peak about three years ago, and interest has been dwindling since. It's like coders got their fix of "new ways of thinking about code", and now have gone back to whatever they feel most productive in. Moreover, the buzziest alt languages now (Elixir, Go, Kotlin) seem to be much closer to existing mainstream languages than the buzzy ones of…

Ultimately, the value of a piece of code is decided by the functionality it offers, rather than what language it is written. Thus, project with 'I made X using Y' formula, while it might be a cool personal achievement, doesn't make it go beyond the confinement of its intrinsic functionality. A web server written in clojure, doesn't make it a space rocket, and certainly not making you a rocket scientist.
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