Clojure Scripting on Node.js • Hacker News Board

Re: Clojure Scripting on Node.js

#21

Post by Borkdude » Fri, Aug 05, 2022, 10:03 AM UTC

cutler wrote: post #20

Borkdude wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main difference is that nbb lets you execute a .cljs file straight away, without a compilation step. As such, it doesn't need any JVM tooling. You can create an AWS Lambda with only a couple of lines of code: https://blog.michielborkent.nl/aws-lambda-nbb.html

What are the language differences. What's missing in SCI's subset? Just Java stuff like deftype?

Multimethods are fully supported. Protocols, defrecord and deftype are supported with some caveats.

Re: Clojure Scripting on Node.js

#22

Post by zimablue » Fri, Aug 05, 2022, 10:13 AM UTC

Just as an FYI for the interested, there is a self-hosted version of clojurescript now, it enables macros in the same runtime with some caveats but the main downside (AFAIK) is increased bundle size, which is less relevant for node.js.

Re: Clojure Scripting on Node.js

#23

Post by Borkdude » Fri, Aug 05, 2022, 10:20 AM UTC

zimablue wrote: post #22

Just as an FYI for the interested, there is a self-hosted version of clojurescript now, it enables macros in the same runtime with some caveats but the main downside (AFAIK) is increased bundle size, which is less relevant for node.js.

There was a self-hosted CLJS project for Node.js which is now abandoned. It was called lumo. It came with a custom image of Node.js with lumo built-in for better startup times since the JS bundle of self-hosted CLJS is quite large resulting in not so great startup out of the box. Nbb is just a library that you can use with any Node.js version. That said, it might be worth revisiting the self-hosted CLJS approach at some point.

Re: Clojure Scripting on Node.js

#24

Post by kretaceous » Fri, Aug 05, 2022, 10:22 AM UTC

smcn wrote: post #10

Barrin92 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clojure is a lisp on the jvm. javascript compilers exist because people wanted to use clojure in web related projects.

It's not a javascript compiler as Clojure is a hosted language.

Can anyone explain what a hosted language is?

Re: Clojure Scripting on Node.js

#25

Post by elias94 » Fri, Aug 05, 2022, 11:02 AM UTC

solardev wrote: post #4

What is this? What is Clojure and why do you need it in node?

https://tryclojure.org/ in case you want to try it!

Re: Clojure Scripting on Node.js

#26

Post by zimablue » Fri, Aug 05, 2022, 12:55 PM UTC

Borkdude wrote: post #23

zimablue wrote: post #22

Just as an FYI for the interested, there is a self-hosted version of clojurescript now, it enables macros in the same runtime with some caveats but the main downside (AFAIK) is increased bundle size, which is less relevant for node.js.

There was a self-hosted CLJS project for Node.js which is now abandoned. It was called lumo. It came with a custom image of Node.js with lumo built-in for better startup times since the JS bundle of self-hosted CLJS is quite large resulting in not so great startup out of the box. Nbb is just a library that you can use with any Node.js version. That said, it might be worth revisiting the self-hosted CLJS approach at s…

But the slow-starting, big-bundle default one still works right? For someone developing an electron app maybe it would be a useful option.

Re: Clojure Scripting on Node.js

#27

Post by charesjrdan » Fri, Aug 05, 2022, 1:47 PM UTC

I love babashka but always find nbb scripts hard because everything returns a promise which makes the normal REPL workflow tricky.. maybe I’m doing it wrong though

Re: Clojure Scripting on Node.js

#28

Post by agentwiggles » Fri, Aug 05, 2022, 2:32 PM UTC

charesjrdan wrote: post #27

I love babashka but always find nbb scripts hard because everything returns a promise which makes the normal REPL workflow tricky.. maybe I’m doing it wrong though

I'm not sure if this applies to nbb, but there's a command line flag for the node repl (`--experimental-repl-await`) which allows you to use await in the repl, allowing you to kind of sidestep the normal annoyance of handling promises.

Re: Clojure Scripting on Node.js

#29

Post by ahungry » Fri, Aug 05, 2022, 2:49 PM UTC

kretaceous wrote: post #24

smcn wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a javascript compiler as Clojure is a hosted language.

Can anyone explain what a hosted language is?

Compiles/transpiles into code that runs on a "host" language execution environment (nodejs, JVM, CLR) instead of it's own VM implementation, or native code.

Re: Clojure Scripting on Node.js

#30

Post by Borkdude » Fri, Aug 05, 2022, 3:30 PM UTC

agentwiggles wrote: post #28

charesjrdan wrote: post #27

I love babashka but always find nbb scripts hard because everything returns a promise which makes the normal REPL workflow tricky.. maybe I’m doing it wrong though

I'm not sure if this applies to nbb, but there's a command line flag for the node repl (`--experimental-repl-await`) which allows you to use await in the repl, allowing you to kind of sidestep the normal annoyance of handling promises.

Nbb has nbb.core/await for top level await which is handy for REPL usage. Furthermore it has promesa which is a library for dealing with promises.