How I Start: Clojure • Hacker News Board

Re: How I Start: Clojure

#21

Post by mbillie1 » Tue, Apr 07, 2015, 6:32 PM UTC

ticking wrote: post #19

I really don't see the advantage of trying to sell clojure and emacs as a package, it just alienates a lot of potential newcomers. Sadly almost every Clojure tutorial I've seen so far does this. Most tutorials for other programming languages simply go with a text editor of your choice + a console repl.

Well... I may be biased as one of those folks who uses both vim and emacs, but: there is a big (positive) difference in my opinion between evaluating code in-line, right from your source file, in your editor, than copy+pasting it into a REPL somewhere. Loading up your ns in cider and then being able to evaluate functions, edit them, and see their output right in emacs is terrifically powerful. Even in SublimeText or IntelliJ or something you have to wrap the function in question in a print statement to do that, sometimes affecting lexical scope, etc.

Re: How I Start: Clojure

#22

Post by not-much-io » Tue, Apr 07, 2015, 6:33 PM UTC

puredanger wrote: post #17

not-much-io wrote: post #16

This is an excellent tutorial, kudos to the author! As an additional supplement for beginners I'd also suggest solving some coding challenges in Clojure on pages like HackerRank. It's addictive fun and supplies cool problems to solve at will, made a big difference for me.

The http://www.4clojure.com/ site does a great job of this.

Absolutely. The quality of other's solutions and the more Clojure centric atmosphere are pluses compared to for ex. HackerRank. The reason why I personally chose HackerRank over 4clojure was the Ranking/Badge/Percentile central theme. I just got hooked on competing with other people and upping my profile. Though now I am thinking I should give 4clojure another go..

Re: How I Start: Clojure

#23

Post by puredanger » Tue, Apr 07, 2015, 6:35 PM UTC

ticking wrote: post #18

not-much-io wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I second this. Although I myself use Emacs and am very happy with it, Cursive allows focusing on Clojure and not on the setup. Though once some level of skill has been achieved, I'd recommend Emacs. :)

Why though? Cursive has a working debugger while Emacs doesn't. Emacs has a lot of stuff outside the realm of Clojure, like irc mail and orgmode, but Cursive really is the more advanced Clojure environment. Even @dnolen seems to have switched to it.

Actually Emacs does have a Clojure debugger now. http://endlessparentheses.com/cider-debug-a-visual-interacti...

Re: How I Start: Clojure

#24

Post by not-much-io » Tue, Apr 07, 2015, 6:57 PM UTC

ticking wrote: post #18

not-much-io wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I second this. Although I myself use Emacs and am very happy with it, Cursive allows focusing on Clojure and not on the setup. Though once some level of skill has been achieved, I'd recommend Emacs. :)

Why though? Cursive has a working debugger while Emacs doesn't. Emacs has a lot of stuff outside the realm of Clojure, like irc mail and orgmode, but Cursive really is the more advanced Clojure environment. Even @dnolen seems to have switched to it.

Maybe it's just my 4gigs of RAM speaking, but Cursive is sluggish and heavy. I have Emacs running in a drop down terminal, that I can hide and show fast, I can run many languages simultaneously (Python and Clojure for me), I can quickly navigate and to all sorts of things without any load time. Everything feels very effortless, thus why I'd recommend Emacs. Not to say that I am above opening up Cursive for serious refactoring or navigation. :)

NB: I personally also hate using the mouse.

Re: How I Start: Clojure

#25

Post by kungfooguru » Tue, Apr 07, 2015, 6:59 PM UTC

ticking wrote: post #19

I really don't see the advantage of trying to sell clojure and emacs as a package, it just alienates a lot of potential newcomers. Sadly almost every Clojure tutorial I've seen so far does this. Most tutorials for other programming languages simply go with a text editor of your choice + a console repl.

If you look at the rest of the posts on howistart.org you'll see that each mentions in some way the authors development environment of choice. This is on purpose, howistart is meant to be opinionated and show how the author works, not attempt to be generic.

Re: How I Start: Clojure

#26

Post by nemoniac » Tue, Apr 07, 2015, 7:05 PM UTC

ticking wrote: post #19

I really don't see the advantage of trying to sell clojure and emacs as a package, it just alienates a lot of potential newcomers. Sadly almost every Clojure tutorial I've seen so far does this. Most tutorials for other programming languages simply go with a text editor of your choice + a console repl.

Huh? That was the first thing about it that caught my interest!

Re: How I Start: Clojure

#27

Post by dxhdr » Tue, Apr 07, 2015, 7:11 PM UTC

kungfooguru wrote: post #25

ticking wrote: post #19

I really don't see the advantage of trying to sell clojure and emacs as a package, it just alienates a lot of potential newcomers. Sadly almost every Clojure tutorial I've seen so far does this. Most tutorials for other programming languages simply go with a text editor of your choice + a console repl.

If you look at the rest of the posts on howistart.org you'll see that each mentions in some way the authors development environment of choice. This is on purpose, howistart is meant to be opinionated and show how the author works, not attempt to be generic.

I'll second this; there's a huge amount of value to be gained by reading opinionated pieces from experienced software developers. Many times it's just inspiration in the form of "huh that's cool, I wonder how I can integrate that feature/technique into my own workflow ..." I think that's also part of the appeal of watching other programmers livestream, though unfortunately there the signal to noise ratio is so much lower there than a well written article.

Re: How I Start: Clojure

#28

Post by zorked » Tue, Apr 07, 2015, 7:11 PM UTC

ticking wrote: post #19

I really don't see the advantage of trying to sell clojure and emacs as a package, it just alienates a lot of potential newcomers. Sadly almost every Clojure tutorial I've seen so far does this. Most tutorials for other programming languages simply go with a text editor of your choice + a console repl.

Agreed, learning Emacs while learning Clojure is just a bad idea. It's a huge distraction and it ties the success of learning Clojure into the success of learning Emacs (which will never be everyone's thing) and reduces your speed while learning.

If you really want to evaluate stuff inline and get a more LISPian experience, use LightTable, not Emacs. But even then, I'd recommend against that. Use what you know.

Re: How I Start: Clojure

#29

Post by davexunit » Tue, Apr 07, 2015, 7:21 PM UTC

ticking wrote: post #19

I really don't see the advantage of trying to sell clojure and emacs as a package, it just alienates a lot of potential newcomers. Sadly almost every Clojure tutorial I've seen so far does this. Most tutorials for other programming languages simply go with a text editor of your choice + a console repl.

>I really don't see the advantage of trying to sell clojure and emacs as a package

Because Emacs is the best Lisp editing environment, hands down.

Re: How I Start: Clojure

#30

Post by cryodesign » Tue, Apr 07, 2015, 7:25 PM UTC

krat0sprakhar wrote: post #3

Great writeup. Side note: If it were upto to me, I'd recommend Cursive Clojure (with IntelliJ) to beginners. No steep learning curve and works flawlessly! https://cursiveclojure.com/ EDIT: Added link

I'm a beginner and Clojure is on my list to try out, so this tutorial comes in handy. However I was looking to use LightTable - is this still a good choice?

http://lighttable.com/