6 ms·

This is very similar to my experience. There's definitely some friction getting started; the odd using/require macros for importing (which switched sometime in

This is very similar to my experience. There's definitely some friction getting started; the odd using/require macros for importing (which switched sometime in the last 2 years, which means a lot of out-of-date SO answers); the fact that most docs recommend using emacs which, if you aren't already a user, is not going to be easy to deal with; the parens. But it's amazing. I do really miss types, but found that unit tests + Schema[0] serves my needs; they provide some type-ish enforcement, and do a terrific job documenting my code so that when I return to it months later, I have some idea of what's in all these map structures. Another unsung feature is that emacs + paredit + s-exprs + repl means the actual mechanics of writing Clojure is wildly better than any other dev environment. The ability to operate confidently and consistently on semantic units of code vs. text is really amazing and I immediately miss it when I switch back to JS or Python. I'm sure other Clojurists felt they had already experienced something like FB's Prune when it was discussed here a few days ago. Not to mention learning a Lisp really does increase your understanding of what's possible. I've seen others recommend holding off on playing with macros until you've become quite familiar with the language, but I couldn't disagree more. Play with them right away! I have perhaps ~200 hours of Clojure under my belt -- barely anything -- but I've hacked together a few useful macros. Though I barely understand how they work when revisiting them, it definitely increased my understanding of what's possible, and what's missing, in other languages. So yeah...learn some Clojure. Just do it. [0] https://github.com/Prismatic/schema https://github.com/Prismatic/schema

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
Mikera 11y ago
Note: you don't need to commit to Emacs to get the productivity benefits of Clojure. Eclipse with the Counterclockwise plugin (and I believe IntelliJ with Cursive too) also give you comprehensive REPL, s-expr manipulation and paredit features.
- huahaiy 11y ago
  vim with fireplace.vim and paredit.vim plugins are pretty nice as well.
- ane 11y ago
  The benefit of CIDER (the Clojure Emacs development environment) is that it now has a s-expr based debugger, whereas Cursive's debugger is still call stack based. So you can traverse the AST like in any other Lisp debugger and evaluate and manipulate s-exprs as you go.
dmichulke 11y ago
I use clojure for 4 years now and I think I had to write macros only twice. In general, I'd advise against them and be wary of libraries that try to solve a lot of things with macros, the main reason being they are not easily composable and make things implicit that should be explicit. The parens become less of a problem the more you know about clojure. You will find ways to traverse a map with very few parentheses that will make you grasp the code very efficiently. To this end I would recommend anyone starting clojure to do a few clojure koans each day and check their solution against the best solutions. www.4clojure.com Finally, the tests (assertions via assert, :pre and :post) are indeed THE thing to use for both documentation and type checking and it allows to have kind of static typing where you want it. Of course, exceptions will only occur during run-time but your tests check for errors during run-time anyway, so why force someone to do type checking at compile time?
- sklogic 11y ago
  > In general, I'd advise against them Why? Macros are the single most important productivity feature in Lisps. Macros allow to implement eDSLs trivially, in the most robust way possible. Yes, you need to follow a certain discipline, but once you get it, you won't ever want to touch a language without macros.
  - dmichulke 11y ago
    Most of the macros in libraries were saving a pair of parentheses at the cost of making code more obscure and, well, less explicit. A few co-workers also liked macros alot so they did stuff that could have been done in functions. I suppose my experience is that clojure's core macros are sufficient and/or I never saw a good eDSL that would have been worse without macros. (Input is welcome) Also, I don't feel I missed out on something because the biggest productivity features for me are being functional, maps-as-objects + dynamic typing, destructuring, emacs (yeah I know), immutability, threaded execution via pmap, Java libs. However, I suppose these productivity features depend strongly on where you come from (for me: Java)
    - sklogic 11y ago
agumonkey 11y ago
I spend most of my time in emacs doing elisp and python, where everything is smooth, small and stupid. I just got back into Eclipse/Java. And the culture shock is so strong I had anger attacks for two days. The Enterprise world is quite weird, they don't really care about the code, it's just an artefact, the IDEs reflect that, the 'UX' too. They don't really want you or understand how to manipulate code fast. It's loads of declarations that gets in the way of thinking, all inside ergonomically poor tools that are supposedly necessary to survive (Types are nice, but Generic OOP still feels like a burden compared to functions + HM). They want documentation, they want an asset, that's how they 'manage' complexity in the long run. All of this so you can mutate tiny bits of arrays... Crazy. It also shows how language and standard library design matters. Python APIs are often tiny, everything is in this language, you rarely have to fight to remember, it falls down pretty nicely, and in case you have doubts you're one repl/dir/help away from finding out. Different culture. Of course, in other paradigms, what is taking so much energy would be done in a 3rd or maybe less, so you don't need all the ceremony...
- nanny 11y ago
  Nice comment, especially your second paragraph. It's nearly exactly how I feel as well. What made you get back into Eclipse/Java?
  - agumonkey 11y ago
    Guess what, reality, I have to find a job, IT consultancy hires as always, JEE is still the main thing in enterprises. If this fails or maybe later, I'll try to switch towards Scala, Clojure, F#. What's your line of work ? how many other languages do you know ?
pjmlp 11y ago
> Another unsung feature is that emacs + paredit + s-exprs + repl means the actual mechanics of writing Clojure is wildly better than any other dev environment. Not if you take commercial Common Lisps devenvs into account.
- agumonkey 11y ago
  Beside Franz who else is out there ?
  - pjmlp 11y ago
    There is LispWorks. And I dare to say that even Macintosh Common Lisp had a better developer experience than current Emacs based tooling, but lispm can correct me on that.
    - agumonkey 11y ago
      Ha, for a reason I always thought Franz and LW were the same u_u; Dare, dare, my friend, but give me some details :)

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

Mikera 11y ago

Note: you don't need to commit to Emacs to get the productivity benefits of Clojure. Eclipse with the Counterclockwise plugin (and I believe IntelliJ with Cursive too) also give you comprehensive REPL, s-expr manipulation and paredit features.

huahaiy 11y ago
vim with fireplace.vim and paredit.vim plugins are pretty nice as well.
ane 11y ago
The benefit of CIDER (the Clojure Emacs development environment) is that it now has a s-expr based debugger, whereas Cursive's debugger is still call stack based. So you can traverse the AST like in any other Lisp debugger and evaluate and manipulate s-exprs as you go.

dmichulke 11y ago

I use clojure for 4 years now and I think I had to write macros only twice. In general, I'd advise against them and be wary of libraries that try to solve a lot of things with macros, the main reason being they are not easily composable and make things implicit that should be explicit. The parens become less of a problem the more you know about clojure. You will find ways to traverse a map with very few parentheses that will make you grasp the code very efficiently. To this end I would recommend anyone starting clojure to do a few clojure koans each day and check their solution against the best solutions. www.4clojure.com Finally, the tests (assertions via assert, :pre and :post) are indeed THE thing to use for both documentation and type checking and it allows to have kind of static typing where you want it. Of course, exceptions will only occur during run-time but your tests check for errors during run-time anyway, so why force someone to do type checking at compile time?

sklogic 11y ago
> In general, I'd advise against them Why? Macros are the single most important productivity feature in Lisps. Macros allow to implement eDSLs trivially, in the most robust way possible. Yes, you need to follow a certain discipline, but once you get it, you won't ever want to touch a language without macros.
- dmichulke 11y ago
  Most of the macros in libraries were saving a pair of parentheses at the cost of making code more obscure and, well, less explicit. A few co-workers also liked macros alot so they did stuff that could have been done in functions. I suppose my experience is that clojure's core macros are sufficient and/or I never saw a good eDSL that would have been worse without macros. (Input is welcome) Also, I don't feel I missed out on something because the biggest productivity features for me are being functional, maps-as-objects + dynamic typing, destructuring, emacs (yeah I know), immutability, threaded execution via pmap, Java libs. However, I suppose these productivity features depend strongly on where you come from (for me: Java)
  - sklogic 11y ago

agumonkey 11y ago

I spend most of my time in emacs doing elisp and python, where everything is smooth, small and stupid. I just got back into Eclipse/Java. And the culture shock is so strong I had anger attacks for two days. The Enterprise world is quite weird, they don't really care about the code, it's just an artefact, the IDEs reflect that, the 'UX' too. They don't really want you or understand how to manipulate code fast. It's loads of declarations that gets in the way of thinking, all inside ergonomically poor tools that are supposedly necessary to survive (Types are nice, but Generic OOP still feels like a burden compared to functions + HM). They want documentation, they want an asset, that's how they 'manage' complexity in the long run. All of this so you can mutate tiny bits of arrays... Crazy. It also shows how language and standard library design matters. Python APIs are often tiny, everything is in this language, you rarely have to fight to remember, it falls down pretty nicely, and in case you have doubts you're one repl/dir/help away from finding out. Different culture. Of course, in other paradigms, what is taking so much energy would be done in a 3rd or maybe less, so you don't need all the ceremony...

nanny 11y ago
Nice comment, especially your second paragraph. It's nearly exactly how I feel as well. What made you get back into Eclipse/Java?
- agumonkey 11y ago
  Guess what, reality, I have to find a job, IT consultancy hires as always, JEE is still the main thing in enterprises. If this fails or maybe later, I'll try to switch towards Scala, Clojure, F#. What's your line of work ? how many other languages do you know ?

pjmlp 11y ago

> Another unsung feature is that emacs + paredit + s-exprs + repl means the actual mechanics of writing Clojure is wildly better than any other dev environment. Not if you take commercial Common Lisps devenvs into account.

agumonkey 11y ago
Beside Franz who else is out there ?
- pjmlp 11y ago
  There is LispWorks. And I dare to say that even Macintosh Common Lisp had a better developer experience than current Emacs based tooling, but lispm can correct me on that.
  - agumonkey 11y ago
    Ha, for a reason I always thought Franz and LW were the same u_u; Dare, dare, my friend, but give me some details :)