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Building a Startup on Clojure

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Re: Building a Startup on Clojure

#151

Post by mypalmike »

bcrosby95 wrote: post #122
synthc wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cute, but i'll counter with this one: > Any sufficiently complicated Clojure program contains an ad hoc, > informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half of Spring.

Ah, Spring - freeing Java developers from the horror of typing "new" since 2002.

If you did a Spring tutorial, I can see that this might be the takeaway. For me, I was thrown at a large project with a couple of large Spring codebases, I concluded that it's about structuring your code around an object graph with independent, testable, loosely coupled components.

Re: Building a Startup on Clojure

#152

Post by patrickthebold »

ithrow wrote: post #56
leiferik wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some advantages of EDN: * Can represent sets `#{1 2 3 4 "foo" "bar" true false}` (JSON only supports arrays) * Maps/sets can contain arbitrary EDN as keys/values. `{[1 2] "foo", 5 :a, "5" :b, true -1, false 5}` or `#{[1 2] #{3 4} (5 6)}` (JSON only supports string keys on "objects") * Supports clojure types like keywords (`:foo`, `:bar/baz`) and symbols (`foo`, `bar/baz`), and can be extended to support other values…

1. Objects are sets of keys 2. JS has Map/Set which allow other composite types as keys and can be converted to objects for JSON serialization then deserialize back to Map/Set.

JS Map/Set use referential equality, which is pretty worthless if you aren't dealing with primitives.

Re: Building a Startup on Clojure

#153

Post by vario »

guhidalg wrote: post #130
vario wrote: post #126

What does everybody think here of C#? I've just made foray into it and I like it a lot compared to Python, Java etc. It almost feels like Kotlin, but with certain even cooler properties.

C# is great. You get: - Tons of developers know it - Tons of Java developers can be made to know it with ease - A good default IDE experience within VS and VSCode, and a JetBrains product if you prefer it. - A good LSP implementation with OmniSharp if you don't want to use an IDE. - ASP.NET, a good default Web framework. - NuGet as a package manager with tens of thousands of packages. - Better than java reflection an…

Thank you. I tried a JetBrains product and Visual Studio but VS was both faster (on my Mini Mac ARM M1) and the visual aesthetics were better--not to mention the overall IDE experience was very comfy, it felt like VS was strictly made for C#.

I do want to branch into F# and FP but i didnt want to miss on the C# train so i tried it and it blew my mind how well the language has been designed (i mean at C# 10, .NET 6). They even made the Java-esque boilerplate thingies become automated so the code reads and feels almost like a better version of Javascript.

I am a new programmer (with only Intermediate Python and tid bits of CS under my belt) but i think choosing C# for a language made sense because of all the things you mentioned, and it also helps that it is aesthetically very beautiful, and worlds apart from C and C++ in many respects.

Re: Building a Startup on Clojure

#154

Post by ilkhan4 »

ldite wrote: post #89

Ah clojure. It's all fun and games until five years down the line, you've had 100% dev churn, and you have a 100kloc codebase that nobody understands, full of functions that don't give the slightest hint of the shape of the data they're processing (it's all lists!) yet down the bottom of the callstack there's some function that'll explode if the map doesn't have whatever magical key it expects. If you're really lucky…

Wow, I've finally found my tribe. All of this rings true for me. I kept hearing about how Clojure is this life-altering programming language that would make me forget all others and want to write parentheses for the rest of my life. But after working at a startup using Clojure for a couple of years, I've come to a couple conclusions about it: a) it is indeed a really nice, consistent language that's really nice to read and write, and b) the choice of programming language is a rounding error when determining whether a project or company is successful.

Re: Building a Startup on Clojure

#155

Post by fomine3 »

zmmmmm wrote: post #113
dustingetz wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK but that's a 500k LOC codebase in javascript/python that nobody understands, maybe the project doesn't even get there everybody hates their language when they have 100k LOC of tech debt from 8 years ago You're right that Clojure's sequence soup problem is painful at that scale (really any scale) but have you ever debugged Java? It's barely even possible, the project needs to drive $10M+/yr revenue to just not coll…

> have you ever debugged Java? It's barely even possible hard disagree ... Java is a dream to debug. I've hacked into complex applications countless times by remote attaching the debugger and setting breakpoints to step through what they are doing. You don't even need source code in many cases. I'd pick Java ahead of any other language on that front.

I don't think it's dream. I believe now most major languages support remote debug like that. My complain about Java debugging is massive use of AOP.

Re: Building a Startup on Clojure

#156

Post by nextos »

yogthos wrote: post #135
ldite wrote: post #89

Ah clojure. It's all fun and games until five years down the line, you've had 100% dev churn, and you have a 100kloc codebase that nobody understands, full of functions that don't give the slightest hint of the shape of the data they're processing (it's all lists!) yet down the bottom of the callstack there's some function that'll explode if the map doesn't have whatever magical key it expects. If you're really lucky…

As the saying goes, a bad workman always blames his tools. You can make a mess in any language, and Clojure is no exception. There are plenty of ways to mitigate the problems the author describes. A few of these things would be having coding standards to ensure that code is written in a way everyone is comfortable with. This also covers things like adding schemas and documentation for maintainability. Doing pairing a…

I don't understand this reputation either. There are very large systems built on other Lisps, and they didn't collapse. What makes Clojure different?

For example, Emacs has a massive amount of Elisp. Elisp is much more primitive than Clojure, and traditionally libraries don't use e.g. data schemas [1] as runtime contracts for data.

Obviously, once a system built on top of a dynamic language grows beyond certain threshold, you need to be very disciplined as there are no static types to ensure some degree of correctness.

With that said, it would be interesting to have a language from the ML family as a viable contender. Perhaps a modernized version of Standard ML. Or perhaps OCaml, if it gains some traction with multicore and algebraic effects.

F# is nice, but it's a bit of a watered down version of SML due to the lack of functors. Scala is too complex and far from ML in some regards. Haskell is good, but lacks critical developer mass and some libraries / laziness overcomplicate certain usecases.

[1] https://github.com/plumatic/schema

Re: Building a Startup on Clojure

#157

Post by lemper »

some recruiters tried to recruit me a while back. too bad they wanted an experienced clojurist for their client. i mean, it's good and all but it's too hard to find some corps which use clojure around here where i live.

so, yeah. while i'm excited with lisp, i don't think i have the gut to start my own shop with clojure as the main language.

Re: Building a Startup on Clojure

#158

Post by LAC-Tech »

ldite wrote: post #89

Ah clojure. It's all fun and games until five years down the line, you've had 100% dev churn, and you have a 100kloc codebase that nobody understands, full of functions that don't give the slightest hint of the shape of the data they're processing (it's all lists!) yet down the bottom of the callstack there's some function that'll explode if the map doesn't have whatever magical key it expects. If you're really lucky…

Not a clojure fan, but:

- dev churn is just a fact of life in this industry

- I'd love to know which language stops you from having 100k LOC codebase that nobody understands! Certainly not C#, typescript, Java...

- "esoteric developers" - that's a bit glass half empty! In my experience people who have taken the time to learn functional programming or any non top-10 language are usually pretty smart and motivated.

Re: Building a Startup on Clojure

#159

Post by LAC-Tech »

onion2k wrote: post #2

If I was choosing a language to base the tech stack for a startup on these days I'd be very reluctant to pick anything that didn't have a local user group. Slightly more esoteric languages that enable you to write better code faster are brilliant, but if you're successful enough to grow quickly, or you can raise funding, you'll need to hire devs relatively early on. If you've chosen a stack that's too esoteric then t…

Have we learned nothing from covid? You don't need to limit your talent pool to your own backyard. Especially since you're not in a major tech hub, by your own admission.

Re: Building a Startup on Clojure

#160

Post by tartoran »

LAC-Tech wrote: post #158
ldite wrote: post #89

Ah clojure. It's all fun and games until five years down the line, you've had 100% dev churn, and you have a 100kloc codebase that nobody understands, full of functions that don't give the slightest hint of the shape of the data they're processing (it's all lists!) yet down the bottom of the callstack there's some function that'll explode if the map doesn't have whatever magical key it expects. If you're really lucky…

Not a clojure fan, but: - dev churn is just a fact of life in this industry - I'd love to know which language stops you from having 100k LOC codebase that nobody understands! Certainly not C#, typescript, Java... - "esoteric developers" - that's a bit glass half empty! In my experience people who have taken the time to learn functional programming or any non top-10 language are usually pretty smart and motivated.

Agree that dev chrurn is a fact of life. But smart and motivated doesn’t imply not painting onself in a corner, it requires a different kind discipline which could be achieved with any language more or less. However, I find that the most frequent reason for churn is company culture of overwork and chaotic environment and in a place where ‘devs rule’ churn goes down drastically.
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