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Ask HN: Is Clojure Dead?

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Ask HN: Is Clojure Dead?

#1
Hi, I don't see much about clojure over past 2 years or so. Same goes for other industry functional languages (e.g. elixir, scala, F#).

Are they just in later stages of hype cycle or are they dying out the same way perl did?

For better or worse most of news/fuzz these days seem to be about Rust (not that this translates to actual job postings though).

PS: Asking because I want to delve into a functional language but I cannot bring myself to do this seriously if it doesn't translate into market value.

Re: Ask HN: Is Clojure Dead?

#2
1. No.

2. These languages were never very popular to begin with.

"I was seeing more HN posts about it in the past" doesn't equate to "the language was popular before and now it's dead.

Re: Ask HN: Is Clojure Dead?

#3
post #2

1. No. 2. These languages were never very popular to begin with. "I was seeing more HN posts about it in the past" doesn't equate to "the language was popular before and now it's dead.

Thanks for the answer! About 2. It's not only HN (but I get your point which is why it could be that they are less talked about and more used). Waht worries me is the LinkedIn job ads for clojurists.

Re: Ask HN: Is Clojure Dead?

#4
post #2

1. No. 2. These languages were never very popular to begin with. "I was seeing more HN posts about it in the past" doesn't equate to "the language was popular before and now it's dead.

Thanks for the answer! About 2. It's not only HN (but I get your point which is why it could be that they are less talked about and more used). Waht worries me is the LinkedIn job ads for clojurists.

Learning functional programming will add value to any programming language that you use as you'll have more strings to your bow, so to speak. You may not get a job writing Clojure, but you'll be able to bring the concepts you learn to any job you do get.

For what it's worth, I do see some jobs for Clojure in the UK and EU on LinkedIn, not as much as other programming languages, but enough that I think I could get one if I were looking for a Clojure job.

Re: Ask HN: Is Clojure Dead?

#5
Clojure is not dead, the core language is still very strong, but the dev experience has been degrading IME. This is due to a lack of heavy corporate backing and investment, probably by choice. Taking a PL to the mainstream is very expensive.

You cannot compare Clojure and Rust in any way as they're completely different design philosophies.

Re: Ask HN: Is Clojure Dead?

#6
Some languages judge popularity based on "freshness", others on "quality" and others on other values, like "usage in enterprise" and other variables.

JavaScript ecosystem typically goes by "freshness" and "vanity stats", like GitHub stars or NPM downloads. An average JavaScript developer would check out a GitHub repository and look when the last commit was made, and if it's more than a year ago, decide the project might be too old and possibly abandon, and hence not look further into it.

In contrast, the Clojure ecosystem typically goes by "stability", "maintainability" (simplicity") and therefore age or "last commit" matter less. The average Clojure developer will first look into the code of the repository and make the choice to use it based on the code quality. That the project/library hasn't changed the last year or two matters less and might even be a sign of maturity, that the library is "done" so to say.

As a ex-JavaScript developer (together with many other languages) and now full-time Clojure(Script) developer since a couple of years back, I can only say that the community and ecosystem is more alive than ever, and there is no shortage of either jobs or candidates when you're either looking for work or looking to hire Clojure developers.

Yes, the pay is way more as a Clojure developer, which also means a typical Clojure developer is more expensive to hire than say a JavaScript developer. But for projects where I usually had to hire 2-3 JavaScript developers to hit any sort of interesting development velocity, I find it enough to just hire another Clojure contributor to really hit the ground running.

The real value in writing and maintaining Clojure programs is developer ergonomics. There is no other language that hits as many points as Clojure when it comes to make it simple to write efficient and easy to understand programs. Having your editor connected to a REPL and being able to send code back/forward between the running state of your entire program is such a super power that it's hard to write anything else than Clojure after you've gotten used to it.

However, biggest drawback is that you're gonna have to deal with the JVM sooner or later. When I first dove into Clojure, I had no idea about the Java nor JVM ecosystem, at all, so in the beginning, it took some getting used to the whole thing. But, you don't really have to touch Java the language, mostly details around the JVM, and there is a lot of documentation/material around understanding the JVM, so it's not hard per se.

Overall, before I discovered Clojure programming was mundane and I owe the fun in programming to Clojure wholesale. Now it's hard to do anything else but Clojure. But I'd still recommend anyone curious about functional programming, live editing of programs and lisps in general to give it a serious try. I probably wouldn't be programming anymore if it wasn't for Clojure. That I get paid more than my peers because I do Clojure/Script is just another point for the language, but that's not the main point for me at all.

Re: Ask HN: Is Clojure Dead?

#7
post #2

1. No. 2. These languages were never very popular to begin with. "I was seeing more HN posts about it in the past" doesn't equate to "the language was popular before and now it's dead.

Thanks for the answer! About 2. It's not only HN (but I get your point which is why it could be that they are less talked about and more used). Waht worries me is the LinkedIn job ads for clojurists.

Probably LinkedIn is not the best place to find Clojure jobs. Most of the jobs I've gotten has been because of word-to-mouth. Getting into the ecosystem and contributing patches/features to libraries/projects is your best bet to be considered for positions. Second to that, there are dedicated job sites for Clojure (like https://jobs.braveclojure.com/). Thirdly, the #remote-jobs / #jobs channel on the Clojurists Slack is very good to find jobs too.

Re: Ask HN: Is Clojure Dead?

#8
I am learning Clojure right now and I can relate to the feeling of not wanting to put time and effort into it if there is no marketable value in return. One thing that is motivating me is I read an article about how niche languages can be lucrative. (I want to say that article was here on HN but too lazy right now to search for it). The other thing that is motivating me is that this type of programming and thinking is completely different to mainstream PLs. It is a fun and challenging exercise and my hope is that it will benefit me in "normal" PL like everyone says it will.

I do have a vague (unrealistic??) idea of maybe getting a PT job using Clojure after studying for a year or so. PT because my FT job has amazing benefits and career potential. We will see. As of right now I am just enjoying learning Clojure and Lisp-style language.

Re: Ask HN: Is Clojure Dead?

#10

Some languages judge popularity based on "freshness", others on "quality" and others on other values, like "usage in enterprise" and other variables. JavaScript ecosystem typically goes by "freshness" and "vanity stats", like GitHub stars or NPM downloads. An average JavaScript developer would check out a GitHub repository and look when the last commit was made, and if it's more than a year ago, decide the project mi…

> Some languages judge popularity based on "freshness"

Thank you for that, I'm now imagining my programming session being interrupted by a pair of little cephalopod people in a Japanese street-facing broadcast booth, announcing what today's acceptable front-end and back-end frameworks are[0]. It seems rather on-brand for... some languages.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1h8KFrqyGtU

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