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The Future of Clojure

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Re: The Future of Clojure

#61

Post by jdminhbg »

lmilcin wrote: post #14
dustingetz wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What % of Java projects fail again? With Java, your convoluted mess is 100k to millions LOC. With Clojure, the same devs make the same convoluted mess but in 10k to 100k LOC, and you've left the door open for an inspired "true Scotsman" to come in and do the whole thing in 5k. But management has to understand that, and of course the principle agent problem, peter principle, politics, conways law ... Java is great for…

With Java, your convoluted mess can be parsed by IDE and you can figure out what it is doing. Also, most of it looks the same and is Ctrl+c, Ctrl+v of something else. With Clojure the mess is still 100k to millions LOC because the guys did not know how to make worthwhile abstractions, but now it can't be parsed by IDE and you are screwed trying to figure out what happens at runtime. ALso, if you think if there is les…

> With Java, your convoluted mess can be parsed by IDE and you can figure out what it is doing.

This is not my experience whatsoever.

Re: The Future of Clojure

#62

Post by juskrey »

atdixon wrote: post #27

A common point is being made in the threads here: "The downside of Clojure is that you need good, wise developers..." The converse of this is that good, wise developers are going to (ultimately) _demand_ Clojure. What I mean by this: I was a Java programmer for years and increasingly started writing code in a more functional, immutable, dynamic style with the occasional need for meta-programming -- for the sheer need…

In short, Clojure is far the best professionalism filter I have stumbled upon, in all of my 20 years of coding for money.

It takes around 5 minutes to figure out whom you are talking to, when you are talking about Clojure.

This worked perfectly for me on both sides: as a contractor on hire and as an employer for some project.

Re: The Future of Clojure

#63

Post by juskrey »

throwaway92938 wrote: post #48
atdixon wrote: post #27

A common point is being made in the threads here: "The downside of Clojure is that you need good, wise developers..." The converse of this is that good, wise developers are going to (ultimately) _demand_ Clojure. What I mean by this: I was a Java programmer for years and increasingly started writing code in a more functional, immutable, dynamic style with the occasional need for meta-programming -- for the sheer need…

> The converse of this is that good, wise developers are going to (ultimately) _demand_ Clojure. HN seems to blindly accept the idea that developers using niche languages are good but I certainly haven't seen any proof of that and I haven't seen anything to even remotely suggest that good developers gravitate towards Clojure. Great developers have to be working on hard problems and almost all of the hard problems in…

Not that developers using niche languages are good, but rather it is very easy to figure out if they are good.

Re: The Future of Clojure

#64

Post by hangonhn »

ertucetin wrote: post #57
puredanger wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many Clojure companies find it easy to hire smart non-Clojure developers and teach them Clojure. You can learn the basics in a week or two and be a pretty effective Clojure developer (especially if supported in a team) pretty easily.

No, you can't (in that timeframe).

+1 on that. I've learned Clojure in the past and keep wanting to go back to it but Clojure has been the hardest language for me to become fairly comfortable with. I think it may have to do with its dynamic-ness. There's basically no problem Clojure experts can't find a solution for. Its basic constructs are very powerful but all those solutions are not codified in the language itself. So Clojure has this extra layer of "culture" around it and as a beginner that's very hard to learn without a lot of doing and running into a wall quite a few times. Just when I think I have a grasp on the language, I see a new construct or new way of doing something that's completely alien to me and wasn't in the Clojure book I just read. I've not saying one can't become good at it but it takes a bit and might help to have an expert or two guiding you.

Re: The Future of Clojure

#65

Post by keymone »

throwaway92938 wrote: post #48
atdixon wrote: post #27

A common point is being made in the threads here: "The downside of Clojure is that you need good, wise developers..." The converse of this is that good, wise developers are going to (ultimately) _demand_ Clojure. What I mean by this: I was a Java programmer for years and increasingly started writing code in a more functional, immutable, dynamic style with the occasional need for meta-programming -- for the sheer need…

> The converse of this is that good, wise developers are going to (ultimately) _demand_ Clojure. HN seems to blindly accept the idea that developers using niche languages are good but I certainly haven't seen any proof of that and I haven't seen anything to even remotely suggest that good developers gravitate towards Clojure. Great developers have to be working on hard problems and almost all of the hard problems in…

> I certainly haven't seen any proof of that and I haven't seen anything to even remotely suggest that good developers gravitate towards Clojure

What about stackoverflow survey? Clojure is the most paid language (evidence that businesses value Clojure programmers) and Clojure has the most mature user base (evidence that users stay or flock to Clojure after many years in the industry).

Sure, not the best kind of evidence and depending on your biases you can read it in many different ways, but it’s a datapoint.

Re: The Future of Clojure

#66

Post by dgb23 »

Scarbutt wrote: post #39
naringas wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nubank (a Brazilian based startup-style fintech company) does everything with clojure (on AWS). They bought Plataformatec makers of the Elxir lang.

Yep,and they were forced to buy Cognitect too to deal's with their Clojure/Datomic mess.

Can you substantiate that claim?

Re: The Future of Clojure

#67

Post by dgb23 »

aprdm wrote: post #52
talkingtab wrote: post #43

This will probably earn me lots of negative points, but I used Java for eight years and after much initial enthusiasm came to despise it. It was the least productive language I have ever used. I have twice tried to learn Clojure and each time I have to install the JVM, I simply quit, despite being intrigued by Clojure itself. Sigh.

Which one was the least productive language, Java or Clojure ?

Java, which is why they grew an aversion towards the JVM.

Re: The Future of Clojure

#68

Post by hangonhn »

bird_monster wrote: post #50

> The downside of Clojure is that you need good, wise developers... Is there a language that, for a sufficiently large application, you don't need wise developers? What is it? How?

Until recently, I would have said Java because it has so many guard rails and good frameworks. But then I've recently encountered bugs caused by code that basically disabled all those guard rails. Had any one of them been left in place, the bug wouldn't have happened. It's kind of amazing how clever some unwise bad engineers can be. There's just no replacement for good, wise engineers.

Re: The Future of Clojure

#70

Post by hailwren »

bambataa wrote: post #55
throwaway92938 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The converse of this is that good, wise developers are going to (ultimately) _demand_ Clojure. HN seems to blindly accept the idea that developers using niche languages are good but I certainly haven't seen any proof of that and I haven't seen anything to even remotely suggest that good developers gravitate towards Clojure. Great developers have to be working on hard problems and almost all of the hard problems in…

I suppose the argument would be that only developers with a modicum of interest in their craft will gravitate towards niche languages such as Clojure. But you are correct that doing so doesn't necessarily mean they are good. However, I don't think it follows that great developers work on hard problems. Why can't you be a great developer working on CRUD apps and occasionally finding ways to do them better?

I argue that Clojure née the functional programming community writ large capture a peculiar local maximum. I used to subscribe to the “functional = better” camp until going to MIT. I challenge anyone to find a cutting edge CS paper* that is written in their favorite functional language. If it were so effective — wouldn’t one academic have exploited this efficiency to catapult themselves ahead of their imperatively bound brethren?

Maybe there’s something peculiar about academic work that requires an imperative mind. This is why we see the highest paid practitioners programming exclusively in functional languages ... oh wait, the opposite is true.

My theory is that FP hits a nice sweet spot for someone who would like to casually improve their craft. Something akin to breaking out Popular Mechanics after work.

* - excluding, of course, papers about programming languages themselves

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