ClojureScript Gets Async/Await • Hacker News Board

Re: ClojureScript Gets Async/Await

#71

Post by stingraycharles » Sat, May 09, 2026, 2:26 AM UTC

iLemming wrote: post #68

stingraycharles wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That means we have had various exchanges in the past, but I’m operating under a different username here. I’ve had several PRs accepted into there, I think manifold got a lot of things right, if only it weren’t for Zach leaving the community. Unfortunately I left the community for similar reasons, I have a different vision of how the language should evolve than the people in charge, but wasn’t as vocal about it. I sus…

> Unfortunately I left the community for similar reasons AFAIK Zach was just offered well-paying job that was mostly about dealing with Scala, it wasn't about "how the language should evolve"...

Zach wanted to introduce a community-driven steering community, make the language easier for beginners to adopt, and standardize library choices.

This did not align with Cognitect’s centralized stewardship.

This was around the time that there was some quite some commotion in the community around this, with Rich posting his infamous “Open source is not about you” conclusive post, which was in direct response to @cemerick’s Twitter post: https://x.com/cemerick/status/1067111260611850240

Re: ClojureScript Gets Async/Await

#72

Post by iLemming » Sat, May 09, 2026, 4:03 AM UTC

stingraycharles wrote: post #71

iLemming wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unfortunately I left the community for similar reasons AFAIK Zach was just offered well-paying job that was mostly about dealing with Scala, it wasn't about "how the language should evolve"...

Zach wanted to introduce a community-driven steering community, make the language easier for beginners to adopt, and standardize library choices. This did not align with Cognitect’s centralized stewardship. This was around the time that there was some quite some commotion in the community around this, with Rich posting his infamous “Open source is not about you” conclusive post, which was in direct response to @cemer…

That was in nov 2018. Two months later Tellman published his "Elements of Clojure". I don't remember the date when he retired from the community. And I don't remember him publicly saying anything about that drama, but I do know for a fact that he joined a team with a ton Scala. How do I know that? Not sure, he might have told someone I know. I might have heard that from him in person, honestly, I don't remember.

Re: ClojureScript Gets Async/Await

#73

Post by jhhh » Sat, May 09, 2026, 5:06 AM UTC

I haven't kept up with cljs in a long time but I remember it originally being pitched as just clojure on js--at least I think that's how Rich originally described it. My impression was it was just supposed to be, as much as possible, another runtime. This change seems to add in features that are exclusive to cljs and actually conflict with clojure itself as await is already a keyword in clojure.core. Have the two impls diverged over time, or was this feature specifically important enough to the users to overcome the differences?

Re: ClojureScript Gets Async/Await

#74

Post by KingMob » Sat, May 09, 2026, 5:33 AM UTC

iLemming wrote: post #72

stingraycharles wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zach wanted to introduce a community-driven steering community, make the language easier for beginners to adopt, and standardize library choices. This did not align with Cognitect’s centralized stewardship. This was around the time that there was some quite some commotion in the community around this, with Rich posting his infamous “Open source is not about you” conclusive post, which was in direct response to @cemer…

That was in nov 2018. Two months later Tellman published his "Elements of Clojure". I don't remember the date when he retired from the community. And I don't remember him publicly saying anything about that drama, but I do know for a fact that he joined a team with a ton Scala. How do I know that? Not sure, he might have told someone I know. I might have heard that from him in person, honestly, I don't remember.

I can't speak for Zach, but in 2019 on The REPL podcast #23 (https://www.therepl.net/episodes/23/), at 00:41:01 and 00:45:31, he talks about being a bit unhappy with how the core team communicated about his arity-optimized vec/hash class proposal.

He then talks about Aphyr's and Chas Emerick's similar experiences, and laments how in the earliest days, it was still possible to contribute, and how when core development closed off, it was never articulated up front until "Open Source Is Not About You", which is its own can of worms.

Overall, it's a good and nuanced discussion, but it's obvious he wasn't in unreserved love with the language, so I'm not surprised he left.

Re: ClojureScript Gets Async/Await

#75

Post by KingMob » Sat, May 09, 2026, 5:39 AM UTC

eduction wrote: post #67

KingMob wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but there are many reasons to avoid core.async, especially in 2026. It balloons up the Js artifact, has no inherent error model, and transforms into state machine code that's hard to read/debug if something goes wrong. Plus, the `go` macro encourages overly-large functions, because it can't transform code outside its own sexpr. As one Cognitect put it, "core.async is beautiful nonsense".

All async systems have pitfalls, I'd say core.async's are pretty minor compared to most other systems. You're right that `go` can encourage bloated functions and it would be better if it, for example, handled exception propagation (I would guess every serious core.async user has written their own go-but-with-exception-handing macro, it's not hard but it is unfortunate duplication of effort). (I've never had to think…

To be more clear, I didn't mean debugging the generated state machine itself.

What I meant was, the use of the go state machine renders certain debugging techniques useless. E.g., stacktraces are less helpful, and js-debugger is pointless, since you can't guarantee the (js-debugger) will get grouped with the state you're trying to debug.

Frequently print/tap is sufficient, but core.async/go narrows your options.

Re: ClojureScript Gets Async/Await

#76

Post by iLemming » Tue, May 12, 2026, 12:01 AM UTC

KingMob wrote: post #74

iLemming wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was in nov 2018. Two months later Tellman published his "Elements of Clojure". I don't remember the date when he retired from the community. And I don't remember him publicly saying anything about that drama, but I do know for a fact that he joined a team with a ton Scala. How do I know that? Not sure, he might have told someone I know. I might have heard that from him in person, honestly, I don't remember.

I can't speak for Zach, but in 2019 on The REPL podcast #23 ( https://www.therepl.net/episodes/23/ ), at 00:41:01 and 00:45:31, he talks about being a bit unhappy with how the core team communicated about his arity-optimized vec/hash class proposal. He then talks about Aphyr's and Chas Emerick's similar experiences, and laments how in the earliest days, it was still possible to contribute, and how when core developme…

> it's a good and nuanced discussion

Yeah, no, I'm not saying Zach wasn't unhappy with the whole core team vs Emerick drama, none of us were. I kinda get it, but also, I don't get it like at all. There are so many tiny details I don't know anything about, but I also feel it was somewhat personal, not really socio-technological (so to speak). Otherwise, we would've maybe seen a big split and a Clojure fork. I see the similar tension (for years) now in Emacs and Org-mode camps. Contributing to core Emacs has similar pain points - specific workflows (no PRs - patches discussed in the mailing list, tone of dismissal toward community-submitted fixes, etc.), but I don't see any big contributors going like: "fuck it, I'm tired of this BS, I'm gonna go contribute to Neovim instead..."

It is really sad that Chas decided to leave slamming the door, makes it almost impossible to imagine him returning and contributing to let's say to Jank, which afaik has none of the hurdles he complained about.