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Ask HN: Is Clojure Dead?

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Re: Ask HN: Is Clojure Dead?

#51

Post by perrygeo »

pyb wrote: post #31
tsm wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have examples of the dev experience degrading? My experiences is that the tools and libraries only continue to mature (as does the Clojure language itself). Do you just mean that things are improving less quickly than they are for, e.g., Typescript?

I mean compared to a few years ago. I tried setting up a new project after 1 or 2 years away from the ecosystem, and struggled a lot : all existing templates to set up new projects (esp. with CLJ/CLJS combined) had bitrotten and were not usable out of the box ; emacs integration no longer working out of the box, etc. I think it's a "death by a 1000 cuts"/"broken windows" that is may be happening when the ecosystem la…

Similar experience here. My first Clojure(script) projects used leiningen, now everything is deps.edn and the clojure CLI. Cool, changes happen. But editor integration, REPL tooling, even which compiler to use, etc are not consistent either. The tooling is changing everywhere and bit rot has claimed almost all of my past projects. The code is still 100% compatible but the build system is just broken. I've given up trying to port any projects over - it's easier to generate scaffolding for a new project in the tool-du-jour and move the actual code into that structure.

Since there is no obvious right way, there's little consistency between projects - which means you're likely to follow the wrong path if you follow the wrong README or pick an outdated starter template. This forces developers to make a ton of orthogonal choices up front before they even begin coding.

Case in point: https://clojurescript.org/tools/tools lists 4 different build tools without any explanation as to how they relate or why you might pick one over the other. But don't worry, you'll find out after days of tedious research!

If Clojure had a consistent out-of-the-box experience like Go or Rust, I think it could rule the world. It's a great language but the developer experience is a serious impediment to that.

Re: Ask HN: Is Clojure Dead?

#52

Post by ironmagma »

sgt wrote: post #23
moomin wrote: post #19

I’m going to be a contrarian here: the answer is yes. Yes there commercial jobs out there, yes there are big names that use it, but it’s an increasingly insular community, it’s ceased growing, a lot of people have moved on, and it never really found a niche. Established programming languages never “die” in the sense of dropping to zero, but to the extent that the question is meaningful, Clojure’s dead.

A lot of living languages are based around insular communities. Clojure just fits a niche (people who want a general purpose LISP on the JVM), that's all. I can't be sure though since I am not a Clojure developer.

Clojure goes out of its way to be insular. Creating a PR upstream requires you to have been given access explicitly from Rich Hickey (or whoever admins their Gitlab instance). The Clojurians slack is invite-only. etc.

Re: Ask HN: Is Clojure Dead?

#53

Post by pyb »

perrygeo wrote: post #51
pyb wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean compared to a few years ago. I tried setting up a new project after 1 or 2 years away from the ecosystem, and struggled a lot : all existing templates to set up new projects (esp. with CLJ/CLJS combined) had bitrotten and were not usable out of the box ; emacs integration no longer working out of the box, etc. I think it's a "death by a 1000 cuts"/"broken windows" that is may be happening when the ecosystem la…

Similar experience here. My first Clojure(script) projects used leiningen, now everything is deps.edn and the clojure CLI. Cool, changes happen. But editor integration, REPL tooling, even which compiler to use, etc are not consistent either. The tooling is changing everywhere and bit rot has claimed almost all of my past projects. The code is still 100% compatible but the build system is just broken. I've given up tr…

Exactly my experience !

Re: Ask HN: Is Clojure Dead?

#54

Post by blain_the_train »

Even in the most naive models your "market value" is based off Demand (how many jobs) AND supply (how many people can do the job), you need to be concerned about the ratio, not one side or the other.

If Pytyon has 100 jobs and 100 people then the ratio is 1 If Clojure has 10 jobs and 5 people then the ration is 2 and Clojure has a healthier market for you then python.

Re: Ask HN: Is Clojure Dead?

#58

Post by carnundotcom »

ironmagma wrote: post #52
sgt wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of living languages are based around insular communities. Clojure just fits a niche (people who want a general purpose LISP on the JVM), that's all. I can't be sure though since I am not a Clojure developer.

Clojure goes out of its way to be insular. Creating a PR upstream requires you to have been given access explicitly from Rich Hickey (or whoever admins their Gitlab instance). The Clojurians slack is invite-only. etc.

I can't speak to developing the language, but Clojurians (a very welcoming and helpful community!) is definitely not invite-only.

Linked here alongside other resources: https://clojure.org/community/resources

Oh, and there's a #clojure-dev channel.

Re: Ask HN: Is Clojure Dead?

#60

Post by ilrwbwrkhv »

I moved away from Clojure to Common Lisp. The Clojure culture doesn't take seriously developer experience, good documentation, easy getting started pages etc. Plus you have to deal with the JVM and slow compile cycles.

Compared to that Steel Bank Common Lisp is rock solid and just works. Even the libraries and documentation are fewer but better.

I did learn a lot from watching Rich Hickey's talks so there's that.

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