Jvm is bloated. So no closure for me. I prefer Go
Clojure is cool
21–30 of 133 posts
Re: Clojure is cool
#22So... awful and bloated Java code (with javadocs, why?!) compared to short counter-examples from Clojure. IMHO quite terrible way to compare the two…
Exactly. Java code looks artificially bloated (who uses 8 spaces for tabulation anyway?!). Class CookieMap is completely unnecessary, for example - it extends the j.u.Map with couple operations, which could be easily done with Java 8 streams (looks like it's older version of language - diamond operator is not used).
There could be a counterpart here that Java as a language is so complicated that people often come up with these design patterns because they THINK they are necessary.
Re: Clojure is cool
#23Thankfully Clojure will go nowhere beyond a few edge places. I saw a decent sized project written in Clojure script that had to be rewritten once the original authors moved on as new hires struggled to get anything done. Small features took enormous amounts of time.
The fault here is not the language. No new technology should be introduced into a team by a single person. It must be a group decision and everyone must participate.
Clojure and Clojurescript are great but they have a steep learning curve. You have to weigh the advantages and the inconvenience of every tech
Re: Clojure is cool
#24Thankfully Clojure will go nowhere beyond a few edge places. I saw a decent sized project written in Clojure script that had to be rewritten once the original authors moved on as new hires struggled to get anything done. Small features took enormous amounts of time.
That can happen with pretty much any technology if you hire people who can't learn new things.
The current de facto tech stack for building SPAs in ClojureScript seems to be Reagent + Re-frame (or something built on top of them). It's conceptually so close to React + Redux that I have a really hard time imagining a Redux guru who wouldn't be productive with Re-frame in two weeks.
Then of course you can have jQuery developers who absolutely cannot work with React and probably never will, and possibly vice versa (never seen that tested). Back in the day AngularJS was cool but much of the code written with it was horrible, because people wouldn't work through the tutorial which explained how to use it as a tool, not a footgun.
Re: Clojure is cool
#25I like verbosity in programming language. It becomes pretty easy to read the code, compared to lambdas or other concise languages. If you are not working for a startup, majority of the time, you will be maintaining legacy code or bug fixing. I would take easily understandable verbose code over "clever" concise code every time.
In my experience ease of reading code is not a function of verbosity, but a function of familiarity.
And in the general case verbosity and cleverness are orthogonal properties.
Re: Clojure is cool
#26I like verbosity in programming language. It becomes pretty easy to read the code, compared to lambdas or other concise languages. If you are not working for a startup, majority of the time, you will be maintaining legacy code or bug fixing. I would take easily understandable verbose code over "clever" concise code every time.
Studies have found that bug count is roughly proportional to program length, across languages. Saying you prefer verbosity essentially means you prefer more bugs. 500 lines is generally less understandable than 40 lines. There may be cases where terseness can be too extreme, but I don't see it here.
Is there some particular aspect of the Clojure code here that you think is overly clever, or hard to understand? This Clojure code uses only one lambda, and in a straightforward way.
I've written a lot of Java, and a moderate amount of Clojure, and if I had to place a wager on which version had fewer bugs, I'd definitely bet on the Clojure. Especially if there were the possibility that it was related to threads.
We could write this in assembly language, and it'd take 50,000 lines, and probably have lots of bugs. The salient point is not (just) the lower line count, but that when code is shorter, that's a good indicator that it's written at a level of abstraction that fits the problem.
Re: Clojure is cool
#27Thankfully Clojure will go nowhere beyond a few edge places. I saw a decent sized project written in Clojure script that had to be rewritten once the original authors moved on as new hires struggled to get anything done. Small features took enormous amounts of time.
Literally interviewed at a company that is doing the same thing. B series, clojure/scala codebase, moving away to Elixir Phoenix.
Seems pretty weird to suggest that if juniors are struggling with one niche language, moving to another would ever be the solution.
Re: Clojure is cool
#28I like verbosity in programming language. It becomes pretty easy to read the code, compared to lambdas or other concise languages. If you are not working for a startup, majority of the time, you will be maintaining legacy code or bug fixing. I would take easily understandable verbose code over "clever" concise code every time.
Studies have found that bug count is roughly proportional to program length, across languages. Saying you prefer verbosity essentially means you prefer more bugs. 500 lines is generally less understandable than 40 lines. There may be cases where terseness can be too extreme, but I don't see it here. Is there some particular aspect of the Clojure code here that you think is overly clever, or hard to understand? This C…
It would be wonderful if anyone commenting on HN with “studies have found...” would accompany their comment with links to said studies :)
Re: Clojure is cool
#29I like verbosity in programming language. It becomes pretty easy to read the code, compared to lambdas or other concise languages. If you are not working for a startup, majority of the time, you will be maintaining legacy code or bug fixing. I would take easily understandable verbose code over "clever" concise code every time.
Studies have found that bug count is roughly proportional to program length, across languages. Saying you prefer verbosity essentially means you prefer more bugs. 500 lines is generally less understandable than 40 lines. There may be cases where terseness can be too extreme, but I don't see it here. Is there some particular aspect of the Clojure code here that you think is overly clever, or hard to understand? This C…
can you link the studies? I'm genuinely interested
Re: Clojure is cool
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly. Java code looks artificially bloated (who uses 8 spaces for tabulation anyway?!). Class CookieMap is completely unnecessary, for example - it extends the j.u.Map with couple operations, which could be easily done with Java 8 streams (looks like it's older version of language - diamond operator is not used).
There could be a counterpart here that Java as a language is so complicated that people often come up with these design patterns because they THINK they are necessary.
Except nobody actually writes Java code like this. Nobody implements the Map interface. It's just stupid code. The myth of Java bloat only serves people writing silly blog entries and others hung up on "best practices" from 15 years ago. It doesn't seem to have any practical basis.