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Why Clojure?

gaiwan.co

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Re: Why Clojure?

#61

Post by jwr »

moomin wrote: post #54

Who are these articles for? I feel like Clojure’s value proposition is pretty well understood, and every last Clojure pitch can be relied upon to make the same exact points.

These articles are necessary to counteract armchair critics who are afraid of unfamiliar things and feel insecure. This crowd is loud: you can hear the choir of "but no one is using it, I tried it once and there were parentheses, I tried it and it was too hard, I hate the JVM" — there needs to be a voice that says it works (and works well!) for some people.

FWIW, it works for me — I would not have been able to build and run my business without Clojure. The long-term stability is an especially important trait, under-appreciated by people who do not have a business to run.

Re: Why Clojure?

#62

Post by jwr »

newlisp wrote: post #37

Using Clojure without Datomic can be frustrating since you feel like you lose some of the language's value, as you likely want to extend its philosophy and style to the database as well. Of course, Hickey probably knew this when he started planning Clojure, which is why he also created Datomic. However, Datomic can be a hard pill to swallow

Hard disagree: I never used Datomic and likely never will, and I don't feel like I'm "losing some of the language's value". Datomic is a database. You can use any database you like.

Re: Why Clojure?

#63

Post by kstrauser »

I’ve never used Scala or Clojure, but I heard them discussed a lot in the same circles in the late teens. It seems like Scala kinda vanished from common mention. Whatever happened to it, and what made Clojure take off?

Re: Why Clojure?

#64

Post by jwr »

As a data point: I've been running my solo-founder SaaS business for 10 years now using Clojure. It changed my life. It would not have been possible without Clojure and ClojureScript, building and maintaining an app of this complexity would have exceeded my limits.

The article is excellent and I agree with everything in it.

The stability of the language is unbelievably useful. I look around and it seems it isn't valued in many other ecosystems where people have to rewrite their software regularly. I can't afford to rewrite my app.

There will be plenty of armchair critics here, with cliché knee-jerk reactions (parentheses, JVM, startup time, etc). If you intend to form an opinion, I would suggest you read only into the insightful posts, from people who actually used the language, or from critics who present well thought-out criticism, not just a shallow knee-jerk reaction.

Re: Why Clojure?

#65

Post by codr7 »

thom wrote: post #29
codr7 wrote: post #17

Tried to love Clojure, but found it to opinionated as a daily driver for me. Sometimes I just need to get some code running to see a result, which is my main use case for Lisp. I used to default to Common Lisp, but it needs a lot of scaffolding to become ergonomic, and even then it has too many quirks to be really enjoyable for me. So I started designing my own: https://github.com/codr7/eli

What wall did you hit? I can jump into a Clojure REPL without needing a project or even any files.

The opinions on data and programming in general-wall.

Not bad ideas, just not the kind I like shoved down my throat.

Re: Why Clojure?

#66

Post by codr7 »

cellularmitosis wrote: post #40
codr7 wrote: post #17

Tried to love Clojure, but found it to opinionated as a daily driver for me. Sometimes I just need to get some code running to see a result, which is my main use case for Lisp. I used to default to Common Lisp, but it needs a lot of scaffolding to become ergonomic, and even then it has too many quirks to be really enjoyable for me. So I started designing my own: https://github.com/codr7/eli

Macros being supported via quoted arguments is clever

Thank you, I'm very pleased with that detail :)

Re: Why Clojure?

#67

Post by spoaceman7777 »

kstrauser wrote: post #63

I’ve never used Scala or Clojure, but I heard them discussed a lot in the same circles in the late teens. It seems like Scala kinda vanished from common mention. Whatever happened to it, and what made Clojure take off?

I think the Java 8+ functional APIs/streaming/etc. kind of stole Scala's thunder. Java has all of the necessary tools to replicate the functional style of Scala now, and it's a lot easier to hire for, so :/

Re: Why Clojure?

#68

Post by mattmein »

tombert wrote: post #59
ekzy wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Call it “stalled” if you like, it’s stable and it’s pure joy. I can just get stuff done with Clojure. And things that may seem inactive, like that lib that you need that hasn’t had a commit in 8 years, turns out that it just works and doesn’t need to change. This is commonplace in Clojure. Spec is still alpha and I’m not sure it will evolve more or if it’ll be something completely different. At least they’re not push…

There are things in the core language that are still kind of bullshit. The thing that gives me the most headaches is how annoying it is to use Java libraries that have the lambda syntax. You can't just pass in a Clojure `fn` into a Java lambda function. You have to `reify` the interface and implement the single method. It's annoying and verbose and frustratingly the equivalent code is considerably cleaner in Java as…

I think that particular issue was addressed in the recent Clojure release [https://clojure.org/news/2024/09/05/clojure-1-12-0] ("Clojure developers can now invoke Java methods taking functional interfaces by passing functions with matching arity.")

Re: Why Clojure?

#69

Post by Capricorn2481 »

saghm wrote: post #49
phtrivier wrote: post #36

The part about the "stability" is a bit surprising - in my experience, I try playing with clojure about once a year, and every time, everything is different (I mean, I had to go through classpathes, then lein, then boot, then deps.edn - what is the current way to "try and run a program" du jour ?) Also, is running your "hello world" still going to be incredibly slow, or has something changed in the core system (I kno…

I've always heard that the JVM[0] in general is considered to have a fairly high startup time compared to other common compiled language targets; is Clojure especially bad in this regard, or is this something that's frustrating coming from outside the JVM ecosystem that just adds additional friction when you're already trying to look into using new language? [0] Not sure what the correct term is here, but I mean the…

The JVM has bad start up time in the context of milliseconds, but Clojures slow start up is in a different league. It loads a bunch of classes and it can take a full second.

But you're also not recompiling on code change. You're just reloading a function in the REPL. So you only have to load once and then your dev cycle is painless. But the startup time is bad for things like serverless functions unless you use something like GraalVM.

Re: Why Clojure?

#70

Post by travisgriggs »

lispisok wrote: post #28
kubb wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like there’s a minimum developer quality that’s needed when using a language like Clojure, without static typing, and with a wealth of idioms and best practices that need to be followed and libraries that need to be known. Without it it’s a matter of time before the codebase can’t be developed anymore and the software doesn’t work as intended.

I would love to see how Clojure's "wealth of idioms and best practices that need to be followed and libraries that need to be known" compare to almost any other popular language. Clojure is by far the simplest most straightforward language I've ever used with very few details and gotcha's that need to be memorized.

I can appreciate that. I'm on a journey this last year or so with Elixir, which also has an elevator pitch of "consistency" and "simplicity", true to a couple of defining principles, rather than hodge podge of committee like language initiatives.

But does it really matter now days? If you're doing anything web oriented, you don't get to abstract the hot mess that is web programming away. You still have to learn a ton of nuanced stacks, many couched in idioms that were established decades ago, and perservere today, wrapped in layers of whatever.

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