Has Clojure development stalled?
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Has Clojure development stalled?
1–10 of 30 posts
Re: Has Clojure development stalled?
#2One thing I always wonder when I see stuff like this: is it because development is actually stalled, or is the project just finished? At some point, it can be useful for things to stop changing except to the extent that it is require to prevent bit rot.
Re: Has Clojure development stalled?
#3No. http://dev.clojure.org/jira/browse/CLJ
If anything Clojure development has been moving too quickly for the past year :) It's clear from the mailing list and the IRC channel that people are still trying to wrap their heads around all the new ideas in 1.2.0, I know I am.
That's not even taking into account newcomers to the language that need to digest the 1.0-1.1 feature set.
Even more importantly 1.3.0 alphas have been appearing regularly and they have significant changes that people need to account for, try out in existing code bases and tools (new rules for dynamic binding, new rules for arithmetic, primitive math support, unchecked math support).
Re: Has Clojure development stalled?
#4One thing I always wonder when I see stuff like this: is it because development is actually stalled, or is the project just finished? At some point, it can be useful for things to stop changing except to the extent that it is require to prevent bit rot.
Especially for a new language where it takes time to build a base - time that would be well spent bringing the toolset, libraries, and frameworks up to level.
Re: Has Clojure development stalled?
#5I asked a similar question[1] of Arc many moons ago and received an interesting answer from pg[2] that I think applies:
A lot of people seem to feel that a language
isn't real unless the designer is talking to
them every day. But that's not the only way
languages happen. Nor possibly the best way.[3]
I feel like you get better ideas if you think
in units of occasional essays rather than a
stream of tweets. It seems likely the same
will be true with language design.
[1]: http://blog.fogus.me/2009/02/06/yegge-clojure-arc-and-lolita...
[2]: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=470254
[3]: Hammock-driven development http://clojure.blip.tv/file/4457042/
Re: Has Clojure development stalled?
#6One thing I always wonder when I see stuff like this: is it because development is actually stalled, or is the project just finished? At some point, it can be useful for things to stop changing except to the extent that it is require to prevent bit rot.
There's a lot left to do. Huge upcoming projects:
* Pods
* Clojure-in-Clojure compiler
* High performance higher order operations
on persistent data structures filled with primitives
* Predicate dispatch
* Datalog (fast enough for the above)
* design for asynchronous code (think Microsoft's Rx Extension)
* network REPL
* unification library
* exception/conditions design
Re: Has Clojure development stalled?
#7I asked a similar question[1] of Arc many moons ago and received an interesting answer from pg[2] that I think applies: A lot of people seem to feel that a language isn't real unless the designer is talking to them every day. But that's not the only way languages happen. Nor possibly the best way.[3] I feel like you get better ideas if you think in units of occasional essays rather than a stream of tweets. It seems l…
A pg quote AND a pg styled references list? Really?
(Downvote freely)
Re: Has Clojure development stalled?
#8I asked a similar question[1] of Arc many moons ago and received an interesting answer from pg[2] that I think applies: A lot of people seem to feel that a language isn't real unless the designer is talking to them every day. But that's not the only way languages happen. Nor possibly the best way.[3] I feel like you get better ideas if you think in units of occasional essays rather than a stream of tweets. It seems l…
I think that's a bit apples and oranges. Arc is a long-term project that pg has said doesn't actually "have" to be useful to anyone anytime soon. Clojure, on the other hand, is under active, public development, as swannodette points out.
Re: Has Clojure development stalled?
#9I asked a similar question[1] of Arc many moons ago and received an interesting answer from pg[2] that I think applies: A lot of people seem to feel that a language isn't real unless the designer is talking to them every day. But that's not the only way languages happen. Nor possibly the best way.[3] I feel like you get better ideas if you think in units of occasional essays rather than a stream of tweets. It seems l…
I think that's a bit apples and oranges. Arc is a long-term project that pg has said doesn't actually "have" to be useful to anyone anytime soon. Clojure, on the other hand, is under active, public development, as swannodette points out.
I think you might be missing fogus's point to a certain degree. His point is that active, public development for a language might not necessarily mean that the language designer is keeping contact every day. You might only receive periodic updates.
I don't see cookies being all that different from Arc in that respect. Cookies doesn't have to be useful anytime soon either because, well, it is useful already.
Re: Has Clojure development stalled?
#10This post pissed me off a bit. My comment here, for those that only read comments on HN:
I can imagine that the people that are and have been working hard on Clojure would be dismayed by this odd chunk of unfortunate FUD. As someone that does contribute a little bit of my time to Clojure and the community, I know I am.
This, after:
* three years of absolutely breakneck progress (dare I say innovations) on almost every possible front
* the fabulous success of the first-ever Clojure conference just two months ago (http://first.clojure-conj.org) where a variety of very significant chunks of work by a number of core contributors were first announced
* the "opening up" of the contrib library space (http://dev.clojure.org/display/design/Better+infrastructure+...), with three new separately-managed contrib libraries implementing finger trees, unification, and a common REPL library (https://github.com/clojure).
* the modernization of the project's infrastructure: moving to self-hosted JIRA+confluence, a big push on utilizing hudson maximally, and support for getting all project artifacts (from Clojure itself down into all contributed libraries in the Clojure organization) flowing into Maven central
……and surely more that I'm not aware of.
I can't speak to the cadence of patch application, as I'm not involved in that side of the house. Maybe volunteering to help vet patches would help, maybe not.
In any case, it's an open effort; if you want to see movement on a particular front, step up and do something. Otherwise, idly speculating on things being "stalled" (especially "publicly" vs. just in IRC) is, frankly, bullshit, and could be detrimental to further uptake of the language and enthusiasm of volunteers that are actively contributing.