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How much can a Clojure developer do alone?

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Re: How much can a Clojure developer do alone?

#31

Post by barrenko »

quasarj wrote: post #23
jdminhbg wrote: post #7

The description here of using the Clojure REPL for development is one of the best I've seen. I think part of the issue is nomenclature -- Read Eval Print Loop applies to lots of systems in lots of languages that many devs are familiar with that are not really what Clojure devs mean when they say "REPL." The actual experience is closer to something like Smalltalk where you alter a running system and experiment with it…

I guess I need to watch some of the videos he links, because this sounds horrible to me. I mostly work in Python, which has a repl (though I'm sure not as complete) and sometimes I poke around in it. But if I am working on a real project, or even just a small script, I always want to run it from the beginning on every invocation, because anything short of that is not proof that it works. "Editing a running system" so…

It's a really different REPL paradigm.

Re: How much can a Clojure developer do alone?

#32

Post by quasarj »

barrenko wrote: post #31
quasarj wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess I need to watch some of the videos he links, because this sounds horrible to me. I mostly work in Python, which has a repl (though I'm sure not as complete) and sometimes I poke around in it. But if I am working on a real project, or even just a small script, I always want to run it from the beginning on every invocation, because anything short of that is not proof that it works. "Editing a running system" so…

It's a really different REPL paradigm.

What is? Clojure? Can you explain?

Re: How much can a Clojure developer do alone?

#33

Post by Tcepsa »

prennert wrote: post #6

> I am not using the REPL much, am I doing something wrong? Applies to python, too. I am always surprised if developers and data scientists working with python don't know that ipython, and by extension the python Jupiter kernels, come with a repl that hotloads code changes from local installs: %load_ext autoreload %autoreload 2 Is usually my first cell in a notebook. Repls are so powerful. The repl like behavior of f…

Serious question: Is there a way to use a Python REPL with multiple long-running asyncio tasks, some of which need a turn to run every X seconds?

Re: How much can a Clojure developer do alone?

#34

Post by sli »

csbartus wrote: post #19
jwr wrote: post #5

I'm running my own fairly successful self-funded business, largely thanks to Clojure and ClojureScript, which let me reduce incidental complexity and focus on what matters. So yes, a Clojure developer can do quite a bit alone :-)

I envy you :) I can't get my head out from the Javascript ecosystem ... and previously I've done PHP ... Those two made me think to quit programming, but lately I've found new ways like ClojureScript and ReScript. After 15 years I came to a conclusion: choose a smaller and better language vs a popular one with a huge ecosystem.

Nearly every compile-to-JS language is a better choice than JS unless you really, truly need something legacy. The exception might be Coffeescript, but even that's not bad, it just add a whole lot. Even then I'm certain you can find a modern language that can target, say, ES3. I've never needed that, so I won't claim to know any off the top of my head. But it doesn't matter, because you could simply pass the output through Babel as a last resort.

Yeah, yeah another build step, but I consider almost anything as preferable to use Javascript or Typescript.

These days all my would-be Javascript projects are done with CLJS, Elm, or maybe PureScript if I want to do something fancy with types (or don't want to deal with particular Elm quirks).

Re: How much can a Clojure developer do alone?

#35

Post by nojito »

klibertp wrote: post #4

> There is no other language that places such an emphasis on programming directly with plain and naked data literals. Counterexamples: Erlang and Elixir. Arguably also Prolog. Also Lua. Many Schemes, and Racket. Of course, REBOL and Red. TCL probably, too. I can't help but think that people making claims of "no other language has X" are in most cases wrong, and should study a bit more before making them. There's a lo…

F# is a cleaner example of putting data first.

Re: How much can a Clojure developer do alone?

#36

Post by huahaiy »

lukashrb wrote: post #15

> Clojure is also ideal for a startup, where a couple of competent Clojure programmers can write a complex application that would took a huge team of developers in other languages years of work. There is a saying "if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is". I wonder how many other languages did the author try to know that clojure is the reason for his success? That being said, I really enjoy writing clo…

Author here. I started programming in 80s (yes I am old), so I probably know more languages than people who are younger than me. I also taught programming in universities in my previous life as a professor. Like I said in my article, I won't gave up my corporate research scientist job in my 40s to start a company if I had not known Clojure, knowing that I would be the only one writing code at the beginning.

Re: How much can a Clojure developer do alone?

#37

Post by SatvikBeri »

I don't use Clojure, but I've applied some of its lessons to my work in Julia.

The biggest one is the benefit of using simple, literal datatypes over classes/structs. If a function takes literals, you can just pick it up and run it, and if most of your code uses simple data types, it's more composable by default.

The mini-project I'm working on now has just one custom type, if I had written it 2 years ago it would probably have ten. This has made a big difference in the testability and reusability of my functions.

Re: How much can a Clojure developer do alone?

#38

Post by blacktriangle »

bionhoward wrote: post #20

Serious question: is Clojure worth getting sucked into the complicated/verbose/nested Java ecosystem? I've avoided Clojure to avoid Java. Lately digging Rust...

IMHO.....no. If you're already a Java programmer or Android dev. the overlap with Java is a huge win.

However I remember watching a talk that I believe Stuart Halloway gave where he tossed out the statement "if you're not using java.util.Queue to help with concurrency you're doing it wrong." My initial reaction was to think that is brilliant and would solve some of my issues with Clojure, but after that came this feeling of annoyance thinking how the hell was I supposed to know that?! Java rears its ugly head more than Clojure programmers are willing to admit. And even then you don't get the full reach of Java, for example try getting JavaFX and Clojure to play nice together, good luck with that.

Faced with deep diving into the Java world to really get proficient at Clojure or looking elsewhere, personally I looked elsewhere and ended up over at Common Lisp.

Re: How much can a Clojure developer do alone?

#39

Post by klibertp »

blacktriangle wrote: post #24
huahaiy wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are contradicting what your parent post is saying and agreeing with the OP. So you agree that Clojure is the most data-oriented programming language, but you feel like it is too extreme?

That sums it up. I think Clojure is the most data-oriented programming language there is, but it gains that title not through features which other languages have as well, but through its general developer culture. And also, I do feel that the Clojure community often takes data-oriented programming too far.

REBOL and TCL are languages which go at least as far as Clojure in data-centric programming. Both feature incredibly elegant DSL for a variety of tasks, like constructing parsers or defining GUIs. Personally, I don't have an opinion on whether they (including Clojure) take it too far, but it's true that even that culture is not unique to Clojure :)

Re: How much can a Clojure developer do alone?

#40

Post by klibertp »

nojito wrote: post #35
klibertp wrote: post #4

> There is no other language that places such an emphasis on programming directly with plain and naked data literals. Counterexamples: Erlang and Elixir. Arguably also Prolog. Also Lua. Many Schemes, and Racket. Of course, REBOL and Red. TCL probably, too. I can't help but think that people making claims of "no other language has X" are in most cases wrong, and should study a bit more before making them. There's a lo…

F# is a cleaner example of putting data first.

Yes; I didn't mention it because, while they are technically literals, you are expected to write your own types and use your own constructors. But yes, F#, OCaml, Haskell, Idris, Elm, etc. are also very data-centric.
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