If only Clojure wasn't tied to the fucking JVM
Doesn't have to be: see https://jank-lang.org/, https://babashka.org/
Clojure Desktop UI Framework
41–50 of 139 posts
Re: Clojure Desktop UI Framework
#42The readme says it is aiming for a “web look”, with no intention to make it look — and, presumably, behave — native. As a user, that’s not what I expect and hope for from a desktop application.
Following the author for some time and his main point is that “electron” won already, even despite the fact that the author himself doesn’t like it. And he’s not wrong. Majority of desktop users probably don’t care already if it’s native look or not (don’t cite me on that). The goal of the project to provide a way creating quite performant desktop apps with a DX of Clojure. And it’s a nice goal.
There's no native app, even on desktops. There are a bazillion of different UI frameworks with different look & feel on Windows alone, even within Microsoft products. On Linux or macOS, the situation is no better.
Native is what doesn't run in an emulator, in this case everything non-Electron fits the definition.
Re: Clojure Desktop UI Framework
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
"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.
> I know which one I'd prefer to grok at 2AM with alerts going off.
At that time I'd just opt for sleep. Or sex. Or drink. Reading code doesn't belong to things one should do at 2AM.
Re: Clojure Desktop UI Framework
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> I know which one I'd prefer to grok at 2AM with alerts going off. At that time I'd just opt for sleep. Or sex. Or drink. Reading code doesn't belong to things one should do at 2AM.
And yet we've all done it.
Re: Clojure Desktop UI Framework
#45I 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
I suppose it’s just to clarify that those choices are deliberate, with the trade-offs in mind.
The README also suggests that the reason why people prefer native apps isn’t just the UI’s aesthetics, but:
> Normal shortcuts, icon, its own window, file system access, notifications, OS integrations
Re: Clojure Desktop UI Framework
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I know which one I'd prefer to grok at 2AM with alerts going off. At that time I'd just opt for sleep. Or sex. Or drink. Reading code doesn't belong to things one should do at 2AM.
And yet we've all done it.
No. We didn't. At least not we all.
That's just a myth spread by a few workaholic programmers. Luckily, there are enough 9-5 programmers to clean up the mess created by those 2AM committers.
Re: Clojure Desktop UI Framework
#47The readme says it is aiming for a “web look”, with no intention to make it look — and, presumably, behave — native. As a user, that’s not what I expect and hope for from a desktop application.
At this point it feels like this argument is dead an buried. So many non-native apps on every platform, most platforms even have multiple official GUI toolkits/widget styles so even first party apps are inconsistent.
Re: Clojure Desktop UI Framework
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
"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.
That's because you are more familiar with whatever style of code you are used to.
Don't confuse familiarity with readability.
Re: Clojure Desktop UI Framework
#49I'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 wonder what the same Wordle example would look like in, say pure Flutter.
Try this with ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini. All LLM's are really good with this translation tasks
Re: Clojure Desktop UI Framework
#50I'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…
> It opens with a 'cond', with three branches. First branch is if the idx-th position in word is the same as letter, return green. Second branch is if the word includes the letter at all, yellow.
This is a tangent, but I've been thinking about how I feel when the conditions of an if-else ladder rely on the order they're listed in.
This is an example; if you swapped the order of those branches around, the coloration would become incorrect.
I'm a little happier when the conditions are described completely, such that swapping the order of the checks doesn't change which of them evaluate false or true, but it's also true that that can add quite a bit of complexity over an order-sensitive set of conditions.
Thoughts?