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From Rails to Clojure, Then to Java, Then Back to Rails

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Re: From Rails to Clojure, Then to Java, Then Back to Rails

#31

Post by mtarnovan »

lkrubner wrote: post #26

This is a bit odd, that concurrency would be listed as something they gained from Java, rather than Clojure: " Clojure: considering the difference between being easy and being simple. Clear difference between data and logic that changes that data. Distinction between pure functions and functions with side effects, try to separate them. Let’s try to make simple code by default. " " Java: performance, concurrency and s…

You may be right, still, modern Java does have some excellent concurrency libs, like Akka https://akka.io

Re: From Rails to Clojure, Then to Java, Then Back to Rails

#32

Post by drawnwren »

lkrubner wrote: post #26

This is a bit odd, that concurrency would be listed as something they gained from Java, rather than Clojure: " Clojure: considering the difference between being easy and being simple. Clear difference between data and logic that changes that data. Distinction between pure functions and functions with side effects, try to separate them. Let’s try to make simple code by default. " " Java: performance, concurrency and s…

The author mentioned that the Clojure project never had to scale. My guess is that the size of the Java project demanded concurrency and the Clojure project didn't. Overall, this blog is light on details and heavy on how the languages/projects made the author feel.

Re: From Rails to Clojure, Then to Java, Then Back to Rails

#33

Post by pjmlp »

markoman wrote: post #27
tonyedgecombe wrote: post #5

Another thing I’m getting is that the new kids won’t like rails, and it’s being harder to hire. I'm surprised by this, to me the language used would be a long way down the list when evaluating an employer.

Ruby is still a beautiful language, particularly for its object oriented-ness. And I think Ruby's nature, simplicity and power appeals to young people, however the resurgence of a towering Javascript/NodeJS is hard compete with. These are market forces that really matter when you're wondering what language & platform to use for your MVP. In recent surveys, Ruby & Rails has fallen to the bottom of the list among the f…

Ruby also suffers from top quality JITs vs what JS has.

The only good option being JRuby, as far as I understand. I am not at all into Ruby.

Regarding being polyglot and seniority, a possible solution is to work for consulting companies that focus on multiple stacks.

Re: From Rails to Clojure, Then to Java, Then Back to Rails

#34

Post by jcadam »

I've tried a lot of different languages over the years including Ruby, Go, Scala, and Haskell.

Ruby actually isn't too bad if you don't use Rails. Between Rails and stuff like Spring over in Java-land I've developed a strong hatred of huge frameworks :)

Clojure, however, is the one language that just 'clicked' for me almost immediately. In fact, I'm pretty certain I'll be sticking to Lisps as much as possible from here on out. That is, when I have the choice: I work in a Java shop during the day like everyone else :O

Re: From Rails to Clojure, Then to Java, Then Back to Rails

#35

Post by michaelbuckbee »

oregontechninja wrote: post #15
tonyedgecombe wrote: post #5

Another thing I’m getting is that the new kids won’t like rails, and it’s being harder to hire. I'm surprised by this, to me the language used would be a long way down the list when evaluating an employer.

It's because we don't like or approve of rails. It doesn't make business sense to us (us being a completely anecdotal group of young developers I'm friends with). There are other solutions that provide sufficiently more developer speed and safety, while also providing much better performance than any rails application. Edit: I guess I just hang out with like minded people, but our biases shouldn't negate the fact tha…

What stack are you gravitating to?

Re: From Rails to Clojure, Then to Java, Then Back to Rails

#36

Post by jarsin »

mattnewton wrote: post #23
erokar wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What other solutions are you youngsters using then? Elixir/Phoenix? Django/Python? Node? Haskell?

Not OP but in my limited experience the MVP slot is mostly held by Django, with Node + typescript, Go and Elixir being the “safer, faster” variants “kids” are using.

Ha it's funny seeing Django in that list because back in day (10 years ago or so) before rails took over I was trying to get everyone to use Django at my job. Then rails exploded and I moved to that.

I honestly thought Django was mostly dead now.

Re: From Rails to Clojure, Then to Java, Then Back to Rails

#37

Post by agumonkey »

blunte wrote: post #18

Clojure does not have an alien syntax. As with Lisps in general, it has almost no syntax. (operator param param ...) Done.

It seems that some people really really love syntacticfull languages rather than uniform symbolic/functional notation.

Re: From Rails to Clojure, Then to Java, Then Back to Rails

#38

Post by [deleted] »

bitwize wrote: post #14
tcopeland wrote: post #2

In the "things learned from Ruby" section: Focus on strong object oriented programming What I've learned from Ruby is to favor functional programming concepts - minimize side effects, isolate state mutation, etc. Ruby is definitely OO, but when my Ruby code is more functional it's less buggy, easier to understand and move around, and generally less convoluted.

I've learned to think of objects as not exactly monadic, but monad-like in their pattern of use: whenever there's a bit of state that I need to track and isolate from all other state in the system, wrap that in a class. The allowable state transitions then become methods.

[deleted]

Re: From Rails to Clojure, Then to Java, Then Back to Rails

#39

Post by oblio »

agumonkey wrote: post #37
blunte wrote: post #18

Clojure does not have an alien syntax. As with Lisps in general, it has almost no syntax. (operator param param ...) Done.

It seems that some people really really love syntacticfull languages rather than uniform symbolic/functional notation.

Considering all the mainstream languages, some would argue that most people prefer them.

Re: From Rails to Clojure, Then to Java, Then Back to Rails

#40

Post by jcadam »

stevenwoo wrote: post #7
tonyedgecombe wrote: post #5

Another thing I’m getting is that the new kids won’t like rails, and it’s being harder to hire. I'm surprised by this, to me the language used would be a long way down the list when evaluating an employer.

Judging by listings in the month jobs posting, the vast majority of hiring companies won't look at you if you don't have immediate and long experience with their current tech stack.

Back in my late 20s, I got stuck on maintaining a legacy software system written in Ada95 (I was unemployed in 2008 and it was the only work I could find).

When that job went away, I thought I could get a job using something more modern. However, the only job I was able to land was a new development project in Ada2005 (actually it was a port from SPARC to x64 and a partial rewrite of the same legacy application I had been maintaining for 3 years).

It took me forever to find a company that would "take a chance" on me - which is when I started working with Java.

That whole experience taught me that I always need to have side projects going so I have actual work samples to show potential employers.

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