Live data from Hacker News

Clojure: The Documentary, official trailer [video]

youtube.com

21–30 of 94 posts

Re: Clojure: The Documentary, official trailer [video]

#23

Is this lang for web dev?

Yes, web development is a pleasure with Clojure.

On the backend side, you start your server once, and whenever you change it locally, you apply what you changed directly to the running process, so you don't lose any state and without having to restart the server at all, so iterating on the program becomes very easy. Bugs are easy to track down too, as you can evaluate parts ("forms") of the program inside the process itself, debugging becomes a breeze.

On the frontend side, you have ClojureScript that basically enables the same but in a browser environment. Usually I have the browser on the right, my editor on the left, and whenever I "evaluate a function", it runs in the browser context, so again same thing; the frontend keeps the same state even after your changes, so no more "make change -> wait for compilation -> get frontend into the state that reproduces the issue -> output debug info -> make change again", you just change one part, see the page update and then continue changing.

If you've used React+Redux (or similar) before, it's basically that experience, but much tighter and together with code evaluation inside of the browser context. If I recall correctly, Redux was pretty much directly inspired by ClojureScript and Reagent in the first place, I think Abramov even referenced ClojureScritp/Reagent in the first Redux talk.

Re: Clojure: The Documentary, official trailer [video]

#24

Very cool. My first instinct was to buy a Clojure book.. so for those that had the same, Programming Clojure, Fourth Edition 4th Edition is on pre-order scheduled to be released May 2026. https://pragprog.com/titles/shcloj4/programming-clojure-four...

Same! I think I acquired 2-3 books that I tried to slog through in order to understand Clojure, but never really clicked until I bought and went through "Clojure for the Brave and True", which somehow made it click. Also available for free online, highly recommend: https://www.braveclojure.com/

Re: Clojure: The Documentary, official trailer [video]

#26

Every time I write another DTO → domain → DB mapping layer in Kotlin/TypeScript, I think about Clojure. I’m pretty grateful I learned it. It really changed how I think about software. Still, it’s a trade: less ceremony, more responsibility.

Clojure is very enjoyable if you respect the practices encouraged by Rich Hickey.

I've worked with Clojure in a number of companies, it's an elegant language and a thing of real beauty when done well, but it's not so much fun when you're working on a codebase that doesn't respect the philosophy of avoiding breaking changes; especially when these breaking changes are done in library code, and where a more liberal approach has been taken when it comes testing.

"less ceremony, more responsibility" is a good summary, in a larger codebase a bit of ceremony is not always a bad thing though. I'm also glad I learnt Clojure, it made me a far better programmer.

Kudos to Mr Hickey, I'm looking forward to the documentary.

Re: Clojure: The Documentary, official trailer [video]

#27
post #20
post #8

Clojure is the language that made me "understand Lisp", as originally stated by Eric Raymond and citet by Paul Graham: https://paulgraham.com/avg.html It seems like a small thing, but Clojure's choice to open up for other types of parentheses made seeing the structure of lisp programs much easier. This helped me understand how code is data and how macros are functions that can transform both code and data. An importa…

Lisp philosophy is all about inventing languages (libraries), creating abstractions for each problem. Clojure is all about using primitive data types and maps everywhere explicitly.

virtually all abstractions are built on top of primitive data types and mappings
Post reply on HN