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Is Clojure dying, and what has Ruby got to do with it?

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Re: Is Clojure dying, and what has Ruby got to do with it?

#161

Post by cutler »

throwaway7645 wrote: post #105

This was a really well written article. Nice to see the nod to Larry Wall's excellent talk on postmodern languages.

A lot of people who have never used the language sneer at Perl but I worked with it almost exclusively for the first 10 years of my programming career and still have a deep appreciation for the elegance of its design and the great mind that gave birth to it. Perl is the original linguist's programming language, superseded by Ruby, some would argue, which in turn was superseded by Perl6 with its built-in grammars.

Re: Is Clojure dying, and what has Ruby got to do with it?

#162

Post by cutler »

swannodette wrote: post #22
Grue3 wrote: post #19

Is Ruby supposed to be an example of "not dying" language? Because it has certainly passed its glory days as well. Also Common Lisp is better in every way ;) There's even a JVM implementation (ABCL) for people who like that sort of stuff.

I don't know but it seems to me Ruby is dying the same way anything else with 200,000+ questions on Stack Overflow is dying (i.e. it isn't).

... and 134,468 gems at a rate of 33 per day (http://www.modulecounts.com).

Re: Is Clojure dying, and what has Ruby got to do with it?

#163

Post by cutler »

throwaway7645 wrote: post #122
weaksauce wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I absolutely cannot stand significant whitespace... it is a step back in almost every area of usability.

I love both Lisp & Python. I'm not sure about large projects, but to me, nothing is easier to read than Python and a lot of people agree. It is so strict and authoritarian that nearly everyone ends up writing similar code. Good for sharing scripts on my team. If I write Perl, only I can understand it...and even that is temporary lol (I joke, but you get the point).

If you love Lisp & Python try Hy (hylang.org).

Re: Is Clojure dying, and what has Ruby got to do with it?

#164

Post by nurettin »

dragonwriter wrote: post #27
swannodette wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really have anything to say about your other points, but the only comparable compile-to-JS tech in your list to ClojureScript is Scala.js. The other options assume you don't see significant value in using the same programming idioms across client and server.

While not on the list above, there are certainly others like Opal (Ruby in js)

I've used Opal for client-side validation of a server-side game's rules. (player makes a move on the client, game rules are played out, just the move is sent to server and server plays the same move again using the same game class)

That said, it wasn't a breeze to work with. The compiled object's properties were hard to access. I actually had to serialize it to json

Re: Is Clojure dying, and what has Ruby got to do with it?

#165

Post by lenkite »

lsdafjklsd wrote: post #140
shadowmint wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear this a lot from the clojure community... but I think it's a missed attempt to pivot off the JVM and have clojure be useful for more people on a more popular platform. Missed? Yes. Pick a thing. Be excellent at it. What is clojurescript excellent at? Its a nice language, with not very nice tooling, that is hard to maintain and significantly different from the existing javascript code base you already have, with…

> with not very nice tooling The tooling is the best. Figwheel is hot reload that never goes down, devcards is revolutionary, and a browser repl for live in editor evaluation... > significantly different from the existing javascript code base you already have It actually isn't. Clojurescript is basically javascript that's immutable first, has underscore in it's core library, and then a bunch of other awesome language…

I am beginner to Clojuresript/Clojure. I am not that impressed by JVM Clojure (it is bloated, slow and laggy) and frankly there are better choices on the JVM - Ex: Kotlin offers more possibilities.

But I do like Clojurescript. However, it needs to wean itself away from the all the Java tooling and not require a JDK. We need a lein/figwheel written in node CLJS. An extension that supports REPL like Lumo and step through debugging within visual studio code. A good Clojurescript book. A good React-based UI component library written in CLJS.

Re: Is Clojure dying, and what has Ruby got to do with it?

#167

Post by bschwindHN »

shadowmint wrote: post #125
modularfurnitur wrote: post #26

I think Clojurescript might be the thing. With advances in the Google Closure compiler, it's getting better and better. And the front end developer tools and libraries in Clojurescript are _the best_ out there. The holy grail for javascript exists in Clojurescript. Until then I'll keep making my Javascript env look like Clojurescript. With janky react devcards, Immutable.js, and react-redux.

I hear this a lot from the clojure community... but I think it's a missed attempt to pivot off the JVM and have clojure be useful for more people on a more popular platform. Missed? Yes. Pick a thing. Be excellent at it. What is clojurescript excellent at? Its a nice language, with not very nice tooling, that is hard to maintain and significantly different from the existing javascript code base you already have, with…

> What is clojurescript excellent at?

ClojureScript excels when writing frontend UIs, in my opinion. There are so many good ideas in Reagent and Re-Frame. JS tries to be like Re-Frame, with Immutable.js, react-redux, etc.

Re: Is Clojure dying, and what has Ruby got to do with it?

#169

Post by leishulang »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #139
virtualwhys wrote: post #7

Clojure's not dying, but it's also not thriving[1]. I think it will continue on as a solid niche language for the foreseeable future, but it's highly unlikely that the language will grow by leaps and bounds barring some must-have innovation in the Clojure language and/or ecosystem that gets the tech world to take it more seriously. There are so many options these days that it's tough to stand out from the crowd. Cloj…

Lisp used to be the language for AI, could Clojure possibly steal the machine learning niche back from Python?

Lisp was invented to produce AI. Machine learning is a better way to produce AI. So in a sense, Machine learning takes the needs for Lisp (in AI) away.

Re: Is Clojure dying, and what has Ruby got to do with it?

#170

Post by smitherfield »

falcolas wrote: post #62
TylerE wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's more an indication of _just how much the needle has been moved_. 5 years ago mainstream was something like PHP or Java 6.

Err, maybe 15 years ago, sure. 5 years ago it was the same applicants as today, only minus Go and Rust. Python and Ruby were strong in the dynamic region, Perl 6 was still an inside joke, C++ still dominated game development, Javascript was still the mainstay of web development, and so forth.

Go was around and buzzy (closer to the peak, even) 5 years ago.

Apologies if I've made you feel old!

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