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@yogthos Nothing is hard to do in CLJS but finding the right way to do things can be hard. For example, why doesn't core.async include promises and even better

@yogthos Nothing is hard to do in CLJS but finding the right way to do things can be hard. For example, why doesn't core.async include promises and even better some async/await equivalent? Why does core.async push CSP as the built in async model to the exclusion of all other async patterns? Why are those only found in some 3rd party libraries?

yogthos 11y ago
>Nothing is hard to do in CLJS but finding the right way to do things can be hard. So you're saying that you have to learn the language and its ecosystem. Please explain how that's different from any other language. >For example, why doesn't core.async include promises and even better some async/await equivalent? Because it has different design goals. >Why are those only found in some 3rd party libraries? Because most people find the core.async approach to work well. However, since such libraries exist and have great documentation, I fail to see the problem. In fact, not baking things into the language itself is one of the greatest benefits of Clojure. The language itself is minimal and makes very few assumptions. This means that it can be extended through libraries to many kinds of domains. The more assumptions the core language makes the more rigid it becomes.
- ilostmykeys 11y ago
  The thing is many people try ClojureScript and end up leaving while many others do stay. I am in the former group and my reasons are exactly what i stated but you are right to point out that my reasons may not be everyone's reasons, which I never assumed. Hence the Rant tag. Fair enough, some people find use of CSP for simple scenario of concurrent wait-for-all async management a natural fit but i find it an overkill. Promises are fine but I find async/await syntax much more easy to understand. I do hope CLJS stays a strong niche language but any hope of it taking over the world is unlikely, IMO.
  - yogthos 11y ago
    I'm not saying that ClojureScript is for everybody. Obviously, different people like different things and that's why we have so many different languages available. However, the reason that async/await is difficult to do in ClojureScript as the main reason for leaving it is a strange one. It's clearly still very easy to do, even if ES7 version might be slightly cleaner at the cost of being baked into the core language semantics. When you compare all the things that are much uglier in JavaScript compared to ClojureScript, it's a bit of a silly argument to cherry pick async semantics in my opinion. I wouldn't expect ClojureScript to take over the world either. It's obviously never going to displace JavaScript, but it's reasonable to expect that it will continue to grow in popularity and that anybody who wants to work with it will be able to do so professionally.
    - ilostmykeys 11y ago
      I didn't leave because of core.async being exclusively CSP. That was a big annoyance (and couldnt find the promise library) I left because ES7 and next year ES8 and year after ES9 are bound to give us what we need from a modern language without resorting to coding in a Lisp-like labguage, ClojureScript is extremely expressive but something about the Lisp form makes me spend too much time thinking about the code rather than the problem domain (product features) It does produce tight code so it is a better medium for expressing algorithms but I found that it moves my focus from thinking about features to thinking about algorithms (a strange attractor?) and in the end very few people (Lisp users mostly) will be able to maintain the code... So what am I doing writing a web app in a Lisp like language unless i really enjoy thinking about algorithms more than UX... What matters to me is having a good modern language with large enough eco system and that I could use to build kick ass UX. Modern JS and React-Flux-Immutable suffice. When i want to do heavy data processing I would probably miss ClojureScript and Clojure but the UI is not where I would want to do heavy data processing... I really thought about it based on all these factors and decided to jump back to JS. That was my choice. I don't expect it to be everyone else' choice...
      - yogthos 11y ago
        >I left because ES7 and next year ES8 and year after ES9 are bound to give us what we need from a modern language without resorting to coding in a Lisp-like labguage I'm not sure what that's supposed to mean exactly. I don't really understand what the "resorting" part refers to here. Clojure is a modern language with that has excellent syntax with tangible advantages over syntax found in most languages. The syntax is very uniform and follows the principle of least astonishment well. The s-exps provide additional visual information about relationships in code making it more scannable. Finally, the syntax facilitates structural editing making it much easier to manipulate in the editor. >ClojureScript is extremely expressive but something about the Lisp form makes me spend too much time thinking about the code rather than the problem domain Perhaps that might have something to do with the fact that you've only used Lisp for 6 months, while you probably have years of experience working with Algol style syntax you're familiar with. There's absolutely nothing inherent in Lisp syntax that distracts from the business logic. If anything, my experience is that it puts you closer to the business logic as there's a lot less syntactic noise. >and in the end very few people (Lisp users mostly) will be able to maintain the code That's completely false. My team has been using Clojure for the past 5 years and we've never had trouble hiring people to work with it. None of the people we've hired over the years had any experience with Clojure or even FP for the most part. The average learning curve to becoming productive tends to be a couple of weeks. We also hire co-op students every 4 months and all of them have learned the language quickly and enjoyed working with it. A new hire doesn't have to become an expert to start doing useful things. Learning the basics takes very little time, and they can pick up new concepts as they need to. Personally, I wouldn't hire somebody who was unwilling to work with a new language as it implies the sort of rigidity that antithetical to the developer mindset. > So what am I doing writing a web app in a Lisp like language unless i really enjoy thinking about algorithms more than UX That's funny since ClojureScript provided the first environment for developing web apps where you could get instant feedback on the UI making it much easier to focus on UX. Having a live environment with a REPL makes it much easier to experiment as it cuts down the time between making a change and seeing the effect. This is one of the greatest tools for being able to experiment with the UI and provide the a good UX. >What matters to me is having a good modern language with large enough eco system and that I could use to build kick ass UX This is precisely why I, and many others, use ClojureScript. If Js is your idea of a modern language I simply don't know what else to say here to be honest. Again, if you prefer working with Js that's perfectly fine. However, your rationalization of that decision is flimsy at best, and really boils down to the fact that you'd rather use something you're more familiar with.

yogthos 11y ago

>Nothing is hard to do in CLJS but finding the right way to do things can be hard. So you're saying that you have to learn the language and its ecosystem. Please explain how that's different from any other language. >For example, why doesn't core.async include promises and even better some async/await equivalent? Because it has different design goals. >Why are those only found in some 3rd party libraries? Because most people find the core.async approach to work well. However, since such libraries exist and have great documentation, I fail to see the problem. In fact, not baking things into the language itself is one of the greatest benefits of Clojure. The language itself is minimal and makes very few assumptions. This means that it can be extended through libraries to many kinds of domains. The more assumptions the core language makes the more rigid it becomes.

ilostmykeys 11y ago
The thing is many people try ClojureScript and end up leaving while many others do stay. I am in the former group and my reasons are exactly what i stated but you are right to point out that my reasons may not be everyone's reasons, which I never assumed. Hence the Rant tag. Fair enough, some people find use of CSP for simple scenario of concurrent wait-for-all async management a natural fit but i find it an overkill. Promises are fine but I find async/await syntax much more easy to understand. I do hope CLJS stays a strong niche language but any hope of it taking over the world is unlikely, IMO.
- yogthos 11y ago
  I'm not saying that ClojureScript is for everybody. Obviously, different people like different things and that's why we have so many different languages available. However, the reason that async/await is difficult to do in ClojureScript as the main reason for leaving it is a strange one. It's clearly still very easy to do, even if ES7 version might be slightly cleaner at the cost of being baked into the core language semantics. When you compare all the things that are much uglier in JavaScript compared to ClojureScript, it's a bit of a silly argument to cherry pick async semantics in my opinion. I wouldn't expect ClojureScript to take over the world either. It's obviously never going to displace JavaScript, but it's reasonable to expect that it will continue to grow in popularity and that anybody who wants to work with it will be able to do so professionally.
  - ilostmykeys 11y ago
    I didn't leave because of core.async being exclusively CSP. That was a big annoyance (and couldnt find the promise library) I left because ES7 and next year ES8 and year after ES9 are bound to give us what we need from a modern language without resorting to coding in a Lisp-like labguage, ClojureScript is extremely expressive but something about the Lisp form makes me spend too much time thinking about the code rather than the problem domain (product features) It does produce tight code so it is a better medium for expressing algorithms but I found that it moves my focus from thinking about features to thinking about algorithms (a strange attractor?) and in the end very few people (Lisp users mostly) will be able to maintain the code... So what am I doing writing a web app in a Lisp like language unless i really enjoy thinking about algorithms more than UX... What matters to me is having a good modern language with large enough eco system and that I could use to build kick ass UX. Modern JS and React-Flux-Immutable suffice. When i want to do heavy data processing I would probably miss ClojureScript and Clojure but the UI is not where I would want to do heavy data processing... I really thought about it based on all these factors and decided to jump back to JS. That was my choice. I don't expect it to be everyone else' choice...
    - yogthos 11y ago
      >I left because ES7 and next year ES8 and year after ES9 are bound to give us what we need from a modern language without resorting to coding in a Lisp-like labguage I'm not sure what that's supposed to mean exactly. I don't really understand what the "resorting" part refers to here. Clojure is a modern language with that has excellent syntax with tangible advantages over syntax found in most languages. The syntax is very uniform and follows the principle of least astonishment well. The s-exps provide additional visual information about relationships in code making it more scannable. Finally, the syntax facilitates structural editing making it much easier to manipulate in the editor. >ClojureScript is extremely expressive but something about the Lisp form makes me spend too much time thinking about the code rather than the problem domain Perhaps that might have something to do with the fact that you've only used Lisp for 6 months, while you probably have years of experience working with Algol style syntax you're familiar with. There's absolutely nothing inherent in Lisp syntax that distracts from the business logic. If anything, my experience is that it puts you closer to the business logic as there's a lot less syntactic noise. >and in the end very few people (Lisp users mostly) will be able to maintain the code That's completely false. My team has been using Clojure for the past 5 years and we've never had trouble hiring people to work with it. None of the people we've hired over the years had any experience with Clojure or even FP for the most part. The average learning curve to becoming productive tends to be a couple of weeks. We also hire co-op students every 4 months and all of them have learned the language quickly and enjoyed working with it. A new hire doesn't have to become an expert to start doing useful things. Learning the basics takes very little time, and they can pick up new concepts as they need to. Personally, I wouldn't hire somebody who was unwilling to work with a new language as it implies the sort of rigidity that antithetical to the developer mindset. > So what am I doing writing a web app in a Lisp like language unless i really enjoy thinking about algorithms more than UX That's funny since ClojureScript provided the first environment for developing web apps where you could get instant feedback on the UI making it much easier to focus on UX. Having a live environment with a REPL makes it much easier to experiment as it cuts down the time between making a change and seeing the effect. This is one of the greatest tools for being able to experiment with the UI and provide the a good UX. >What matters to me is having a good modern language with large enough eco system and that I could use to build kick ass UX This is precisely why I, and many others, use ClojureScript. If Js is your idea of a modern language I simply don't know what else to say here to be honest. Again, if you prefer working with Js that's perfectly fine. However, your rationalization of that decision is flimsy at best, and really boils down to the fact that you'd rather use something you're more familiar with.