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Clojure at Netflix (2013) [slides]

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Re: Clojure at Netflix (2013) [slides]

#21

Post by catbodi »

tribaal wrote: post #13
nerdponx wrote: post #3

What happened to Clojure? Was it just a fad, or are people still using it in their day jobs? Are people still hiring Clojure devs? If you write Clojure at work, are you happy with it?

We are a mostly Clojure shop and are very happy with it. It's very expressive, functional, and allows you to tap into the Java ecosystem if you need to. Might not be as hyped today as it was some years ago, but the language itself is still a joy to use. Edit: SWE at exoscale.com here. We're hiring, also for full remote positions!

Dang thats some expensive cloud pricing.

Your cheapest plan offers 512MB of RAM for 5 Euros a month. There's well over 5 competitors who can get you quadruple that amount of RAM and maybe even double the storage for half that price per month. This is due to renting out space at datacenters, no? I'm no hosting expert.

Re: Clojure at Netflix (2013) [slides]

#22

Post by abc_lisper »

nerdponx wrote: post #3

What happened to Clojure? Was it just a fad, or are people still using it in their day jobs? Are people still hiring Clojure devs? If you write Clojure at work, are you happy with it?

Yes, we are using it at a BigCo. I am extremely happy with Clojure. I wouldn't think Clojure is a fad, it never was that popular.

Re: Clojure at Netflix (2013) [slides]

#23

Post by pixelperfect »

nerdponx wrote: post #3

What happened to Clojure? Was it just a fad, or are people still using it in their day jobs? Are people still hiring Clojure devs? If you write Clojure at work, are you happy with it?

Clojure is still around and a great language for experienced devs. But the experience for newcomers is much less attractive than for other languages, which is preventing growth. Also, the largest Clojure community is the Slack channel, which is hidden from the rest of the world.

Re: Clojure at Netflix (2013) [slides]

#24

Post by yen223 »

dgritsko wrote: post #10
nerdponx wrote: post #3

What happened to Clojure? Was it just a fad, or are people still using it in their day jobs? Are people still hiring Clojure devs? If you write Clojure at work, are you happy with it?

Barely hanging onto the top 50 at #49 according to the TIOBE index (Java is still #1). Make of that what you will. https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/

That index lists Ladder Logic (#45) as being ahead of Bash (#48). Make of that what you will.

Re: Clojure at Netflix (2013) [slides]

#25

Post by lukev »

swah wrote: post #16
nerdponx wrote: post #3

What happened to Clojure? Was it just a fad, or are people still using it in their day jobs? Are people still hiring Clojure devs? If you write Clojure at work, are you happy with it?

While other posters comment that "Clojure still works", IIRC the "promise" was that Clojure/Lisp would be much, much more productive , and that claim I feel like must been disproved in daily work, otherwise Clojure would still a main topic around here. Reminds me of the classic Erann Gatt post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2308370 (I loved to play with Elisp, Clojure, Lua, Factor, Ion, Ioke and hope dynamic l…

It is (sadly) not clear at all that programming language popularity (or rather, "online buzz" around a language which is all you can measure) correlates strongly with productivity.

Re: Clojure at Netflix (2013) [slides]

#26

Post by kamaal »

systems wrote: post #11
rb808 wrote: post #4

Is Clojure still a thing? It seems to have fallen off my radar. Java seems resurgent after 8, even Scala seems to have lost momentum.

to talk about something new, you need to have something new to talk about i dont think that scala or clojure have lost momentum i think both clojure and scala, stopped adding new features that are worthy of blogging about you cant just add feature, just to keep people talking about you clojure, is what it is, a nice language, a very smart leader (rick hickey), and a nice vibrant community (check #clojure on twitter)…

>>i dont think that scala or clojure have lost momentum i think both clojure and scala, stopped adding new features that are worthy of blogging about

More like Clojure is in Cathedral mode of open source development. Most of the development is in private discussions, implementation and prototyping at Cognitect, and once they have something to share, they release it to the world.

That's more a communication and marketing thing. For example, you can try Googling but you won't be able to see anything on the Clojure roadmap. No one knows what's the plan even year or two from now.

But thanks to smart leadership, and brilliant development team they have, its mostly a non issue if you don't really care about the everyday minutiae. You can bet the top dollar that they are working on something good, and it will be eventually released to the world.

To people coming from other open source tools, that can sound as strange.

Re: Clojure at Netflix (2013) [slides]

#27

Post by mschaef »

rb808 wrote: post #4

Is Clojure still a thing? It seems to have fallen off my radar. Java seems resurgent after 8, even Scala seems to have lost momentum.

Yes. It's still a thing... but I do think Clojure has lost mindshare. Just some impressions:

* It's natural for the development of a language to slow down after an initial period of churn. So Clojure has reached a certain level of maturity where there's less 'new cool stuff'.

* There are other areas of industry where there's more 'new cool stuff' and attention naturally shifts there.

* The Honeymoon period is over, and anybody that had the unreasonable expectations the Clojure was the magical solution to all their problems has been disappointed and probably moved on. (Don't laugh. This happens.)

* People are better seeing other potential costs to Clojure code bases. I know of at least one organization looking into moving away from Clojure for the purpose of having a more attractive portfolio of assets to potential outside investors.

* My understanding (hearsay at best) is that Rich initially self-funded Clojure development for a couple years, and then got understandably tired of taking the hit and shifted his primary attentions to more commercial endeavors.

* As Java evolves >=8, it's gained features that incorporate some of the benefits of Clojure. Java is clearly not turning into Clojure, but it is getting development such that it's nibbling away at Clojure's technical advantages a bit.

None of this should take away from the fact that Clojure is a well-designed and very pragmatic language for the JVM. I personally love writing code in the language and find it the most effective way to use my time. What I hope the above means it that the language is settling into a more long-term sustainable niche.

For context: I use Clojure in several personal projects, and have done so for a while. I've also slipstreamed it into a commercial app, for automating management tasks, etc. Overall, I've been very happy with the platform, although there are still some startling gaps ( https://www.reddit.com/r/Clojure/comments/9p4tto/best_way_to... )

Re: Clojure at Netflix (2013) [slides]

#28

Post by tosh »

nerdponx wrote: post #3

What happened to Clojure? Was it just a fad, or are people still using it in their day jobs? Are people still hiring Clojure devs? If you write Clojure at work, are you happy with it?

According to the JVM Ecosystem report/survey Clojure is the 2nd main language on the JVM (after Java):

https://snyk.io/blog/jvm-ecosystem-report-2018

ClojureScript also seems to gain traction. Quite impressive when you consider that Clojure is a language/ecosystem not driven/backed by one of the larger tech companies.

Re: Clojure at Netflix (2013) [slides]

#30

Post by jb1991 »

nerdponx wrote: post #3

What happened to Clojure? Was it just a fad, or are people still using it in their day jobs? Are people still hiring Clojure devs? If you write Clojure at work, are you happy with it?

The cancellation of a few major Clojure conferances hasn’t helped. I’m guessing it speaks to demand.

I used Clojure for a long time, professionally. Not much any more. Main issue is that the language is not very readable (a pain point mentioned in these slides) and very hard to find people to work in it. Also more than any other language Clojure is very sensitive to typos in your code. A misspelled keyword results in nil accidentally flowing through your app. It was frustrating to spend time on scaffolding everywhere to catch these things.

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