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Clojure Desktop UI Framework

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Re: Clojure Desktop UI Framework

#21

Post by vaylian »

kpw94 wrote: post #10

I'm sure Clojure is a great language for some tasks... But, looking at the examples (picked the Wordle one since I know that game): https://github.com/HumbleUI/HumbleUI/blob/main/dev/examples/... I find it extremely hard to read. Even small snippets, say line 56 to 74 which define this "color", "merge-colors" and "colors"... then the "field" one lines 76 to 117 is even harder. is it more natural read for people famil…

Clojure is a lisp. Lisp languages represent code as trees. That's why you have so many parentheses. The trees contain language constructs (if, cond, let, defn, ...), data (numbers, strings,...) and names (function names, names of value bindings). There is also some more advanced syntax for quoting and macros.

When reading lisp code, you navigate it like a tree. Indention matters and clean lisp code has the same indention level for all sibling nodes (with minor deviations for special constructs). Most code follows the pattern of defining "variable" bindings (e.g. via `let`) and then it has one final expression that uses all these bindings to calculate a value.

  (defn name-of-a-function-that-i-define [first-argument second-argument]
    (let [sum-of-some-numbers (+ 1 2 3)
          product-of-some-numbers (* 1 2 3)]
      (+ first-argument
         second-argument
         sum-of-some-numbers
         product-of-some-numbers)))

Re: Clojure Desktop UI Framework

#22

Post by CraigJPerry »

kpw94 wrote: post #10

I'm sure Clojure is a great language for some tasks... But, looking at the examples (picked the Wordle one since I know that game): https://github.com/HumbleUI/HumbleUI/blob/main/dev/examples/... I find it extremely hard to read. Even small snippets, say line 56 to 74 which define this "color", "merge-colors" and "colors"... then the "field" one lines 76 to 117 is even harder. is it more natural read for people famil…

>> I find it extremely hard to read. Even small snippets, say line 56 to 74 which define this "color”

I think you make a great point, a point that once someone has gotten used to lisp, is harder to fully appreciate. I’m at the stage now in my lisp journey that i didn’t find those hard to read but it wasn’t that long ago that i felt almost nerd sniped by this weird language. I think it’s worth pointing out that in a more advanced example, I’d still have been comfortable because of the repl - I could navigate between each sub expression with a keystroke and I can send each to the repl with a keystroke and see what they do. Lisp really makes it easy to do this kind of bottom-up assembly - both when you’re writing and when you’re understanding someone else’s code.

A corollary to that, and which was key to me falling in love with lisps, is that the signal-to-noise ratio is off the charts. Whatever you want to implement, probably doesn’t require a lot of code. Wordle in 189 lines is pretty decent. There’s just less to fit in your head and what’s there tends to be solving the problem at hand, not boiler plate.

Re: Clojure Desktop UI Framework

#23

Post by boxed »

kpw94 wrote: post #10

I'm sure Clojure is a great language for some tasks... But, looking at the examples (picked the Wordle one since I know that game): https://github.com/HumbleUI/HumbleUI/blob/main/dev/examples/... I find it extremely hard to read. Even small snippets, say line 56 to 74 which define this "color", "merge-colors" and "colors"... then the "field" one lines 76 to 117 is even harder. is it more natural read for people famil…

The single space indent seems the most weird thing about that example...

Re: Clojure Desktop UI Framework

#24

Post by ulbu »

vaylian wrote: post #21
kpw94 wrote: post #10

I'm sure Clojure is a great language for some tasks... But, looking at the examples (picked the Wordle one since I know that game): https://github.com/HumbleUI/HumbleUI/blob/main/dev/examples/... I find it extremely hard to read. Even small snippets, say line 56 to 74 which define this "color", "merge-colors" and "colors"... then the "field" one lines 76 to 117 is even harder. is it more natural read for people famil…

Clojure is a lisp. Lisp languages represent code as trees. That's why you have so many parentheses. The trees contain language constructs (if, cond, let, defn, ...), data (numbers, strings,...) and names (function names, names of value bindings). There is also some more advanced syntax for quoting and macros. When reading lisp code, you navigate it like a tree. Indention matters and clean lisp code has the same inden…

(i'll just make it clear that indentation matters to users as a strongly recommended convention for ease of reading. to the interpreter, you can write everything on a single line)

Re: Clojure Desktop UI Framework

#26

Post by rlkf »

I found this dimension of the analysis:

> People prefer native apps to web apps

> Java has “UI curse”: Looked bad

to be at odds with this aspect of the design:

> No goal to look native

> Leverage Skia

Re: Clojure Desktop UI Framework

#27

Post by vaylian »

ulbu wrote: post #24
vaylian wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clojure is a lisp. Lisp languages represent code as trees. That's why you have so many parentheses. The trees contain language constructs (if, cond, let, defn, ...), data (numbers, strings,...) and names (function names, names of value bindings). There is also some more advanced syntax for quoting and macros. When reading lisp code, you navigate it like a tree. Indention matters and clean lisp code has the same inden…

(i'll just make it clear that indentation matters to users as a strongly recommended convention for ease of reading. to the interpreter, you can write everything on a single line)

Correct. This is not python.

Re: Clojure Desktop UI Framework

#28

Post by diggan »

kpw94 wrote: post #10

I'm sure Clojure is a great language for some tasks... But, looking at the examples (picked the Wordle one since I know that game): https://github.com/HumbleUI/HumbleUI/blob/main/dev/examples/... I find it extremely hard to read. Even small snippets, say line 56 to 74 which define this "color", "merge-colors" and "colors"... then the "field" one lines 76 to 117 is even harder. is it more natural read for people famil…

I've done a bunch of Clojure development professionally and don't find that code extremely hard to read.

One thing to add to what others have said, when you're met with code like this in the wild and you need to modify/add/remove something but don't have a 100% understanding yet, the common workflow is that you explore this code with your "evaluator" (basically a REPL connected to your editor).

So if you come across snippets of code you don't understand very well, you place your cursor at the various forms and execute them. So you'll start at the inner forms, and slowly work your way outwards, and after that you've verified assumptions both about the function's internal workings and how you'll use it from the outside.

Re: Clojure Desktop UI Framework

#29

Post by socksy »

rlkf wrote: post #26

I found this dimension of the analysis: > People prefer native apps to web apps > Java has “UI curse”: Looked bad to be at odds with this aspect of the design: > No goal to look native > Leverage Skia

"People prefer native apps to web apps" is talking about literally using an app on your desktop, in the dock, with keyboard shortcuts, rather than having a website in your browser. This is sort of shown by the amount of Electron apps people use — you could use slack, spotify, or vscode in the browser, but most people prefer to use the app.

"Java has UI curse" is referring to how when Java tries to imitate native UI (note the difference to "native app", which is in contrast to a web app), it fails and hits the uncanny valley. No-one likes it.

Given that, it's not a contradiction to have a native app, that does not try to use the native GUI toolkit of the host platform, using Skia directly to draw UI elements.

Re: Clojure Desktop UI Framework

#30

Post by exitb »

trentonstrong wrote: post #11
kpw94 wrote: post #10

I'm sure Clojure is a great language for some tasks... But, looking at the examples (picked the Wordle one since I know that game): https://github.com/HumbleUI/HumbleUI/blob/main/dev/examples/... I find it extremely hard to read. Even small snippets, say line 56 to 74 which define this "color", "merge-colors" and "colors"... then the "field" one lines 76 to 117 is even harder. is it more natural read for people famil…

"is it more natural read for people familiar with writing functional programs? (am I permanently "broken" due to my familiarity with imperative programing?)" As just one person who has written a great deal of functional code, it reads well to me. I think because I am used to reading it "inside out"? Reading lisp-likes is probably helpful. Take 'color' for example. It opens with a 'cond', with three branches. First br…

This is the function that confused the person you respond to, ported to Python:

    def color(word, letter, idx):
        if word[idx] == letter:
            return GREEN
        elif letter in word:
            return YELLOW
        else:
            return GREY
I know which one I'd prefer to grok at 2AM with alerts going off.
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