Clojure Distilled • Hacker News Board

Re: Clojure Distilled

#51

Post by dschiptsov » Sat, Sep 27, 2014, 5:12 PM UTC

AlexeyBrin wrote: post #46

dschiptsov wrote: post #30

I am really suggesting to try some classic Scheme course first, like my favorite CS61A by Brian Harvey, or that wonderful Racket-based course (what's the difference?) on Coursera by Gregor Kiczales (which is worth watching even if you are mere a brainwashed Java dev). Another way is through pg's books, especially, of course, "On Lisp" and Arc tutorial and then arc.arc (original version from the 2009 arc3.tar which is…

which is worth watching even if you are mere a brainwashed Java dev and this is why so many people are repelled by the Lisp (or Scheme) evangelism. I don't particularly like Java, but I use it for Android development. Calling people brainwashed because they are using Java is simply rude.

In my opinion Java is the biggest fraud and waste in the history of IT (next comes SAP) - nothing but hype, ignorant parroting of silly memes by "managers" (so-called bandwagon and peer effects) lies, and taking advantage of ignorant.

People who "know no better" (cannot even visit the rosettacode.org, dismissed plain old C - these evil pointers!, Erlang - functional programming is for academy, or CL - not an enterprise level, etc, etc) are, well, brainwashed.

I am not blaming the people, I am just describing reality as I see it, and my view is by no means new or even "original".

Java was just a way to make money (in 2000s) like "derivatives traders" in the last 10 years. Same manipulations, same techniques.

For example, almost all of the very few popular apps I have installed on my Nexus4 are NDK apps - FB, Viber, Skype - you name it.

Re: Clojure Distilled

#52

Post by AlexeyBrin » Sat, Sep 27, 2014, 5:40 PM UTC

dschiptsov wrote: post #51

AlexeyBrin wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

which is worth watching even if you are mere a brainwashed Java dev and this is why so many people are repelled by the Lisp (or Scheme) evangelism. I don't particularly like Java, but I use it for Android development. Calling people brainwashed because they are using Java is simply rude.

In my opinion Java is the biggest fraud and waste in the history of IT (next comes SAP) - nothing but hype, ignorant parroting of silly memes by "managers" (so-called bandwagon and peer effects) lies, and taking advantage of ignorant. People who "know no better" (cannot even visit the rosettacode.org, dismissed plain old C - these evil pointers!, Erlang - functional programming is for academy, or CL - not an enterpri…

Java is just a programming tool and, while I would have preferred to use C++14 for all my Android projects, it is what it is (NDK make sense only for heavy duty applications).

Now, imagine for a second that you are a junior programmer, that only knows Java. You've heard of this thing called Clojure and you want to read and learn more about it. What would you think if someone called you brainwashed just because you only know Java ? For most people this means EOD (end of discussion). Calling someone brainwashed just because he doesn't have your level of expertise with other languages will just make it ignore the good parts of your comment.

In the end it is about what is more important to you: vent some steam about how much you hate Java or guide someone to learn more about a Lisp language.

Re: Clojure Distilled

#53

Post by dschiptsov » Sat, Sep 27, 2014, 5:48 PM UTC

AlexeyBrin wrote: post #52

dschiptsov wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my opinion Java is the biggest fraud and waste in the history of IT (next comes SAP) - nothing but hype, ignorant parroting of silly memes by "managers" (so-called bandwagon and peer effects) lies, and taking advantage of ignorant. People who "know no better" (cannot even visit the rosettacode.org, dismissed plain old C - these evil pointers!, Erlang - functional programming is for academy, or CL - not an enterpri…

Java is just a programming tool and, while I would have preferred to use C++14 for all my Android projects, it is what it is ( NDK make sense only for heavy duty applications). Now, imagine for a second that you are a junior programmer, that only knows Java. You've heard of this thing called Clojure and you want to read and learn more about it. What would you think if someone called you brainwashed just because you o…

Not so long ago a student of a good school in US would know Scheme and C, not Java or Python, and the move to Java as the language for teaching CS is, in my opinion, the result of the same regrettable process of brainwashing.

btw, I never talk Java issues in a context of a personally, only in a broader sense of a "social phenomena" partly explained by well studied "effects" in social psychology.

Unfortunately, Clojure will not be suitable for Android development in observable future exactly because "Java" cannot fulfill its promises - Clojure's runtime is "too heavy and too slow" (too wasteful) to run even on a newest smartphone hardware, and in this, again, so-called reality re-asserted itself.

Re: Clojure Distilled

#54

Post by deno2 » Sun, Sep 28, 2014, 5:28 PM UTC

programnature wrote: post #21

verisimilidude wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of my Clojure WTFs were not related to the language itself, but rather the tooling. This was years ago, but everyone used to say, "Before diving into Clojure, you should really learn emacs and all these other things first." I'm glad I ignored them and sputtered along in a text editor while learning the basics of the language, because I would've otherwise burnt out. With apps like Light Table now available, maybe…

Definitely recommend people try Cursive Clojure, the clojure Intellij plugin. Much easier to use/setup than emacs IMHO. Lots of clojure people have been switching.

Nicer debugging experience too.