6 ms·

Clojure has a leg up over most Lisps for another reason: the people that know Clojure well and participate in its community are not complete douchewieners, and

Clojure has a leg up over most Lisps for another reason: the people that know Clojure well and participate in its community are not complete douchewieners, and they're willing to accept that everyone has different needs and backgrounds. They actually want people to try Clojure out (even if they were - gasp! - Java programmers!), rather than making the assumption that anyone that doesn't already worship their language as The One True Holy Solution-To-Everything Language is a moron. To hear the more vocal Common Lispers tell it, even people that code Clojure are retarded code apes that need to be lectured on why they're stupid for not using a Real Lisp, more deserving of scorn than encouragement or support. Haskell's community is not nearly as bad (Common Lisp's userbase has become one of the most bitter, self-important cesspools of snobbery the programming world has ever seen, and Haskell is far too active and useful to foster such degeneracy), but there's always that pervasive scent of "If you're not already using Haskell, you're cheating, and it's clearly because you're dumber than I am." Then again, the Haskell folks piss me off for other reasons - after studying such things in the context of real math, it's infuriating to be talked down to by people that just "got" monads and think that their shallow grasp of the concept entitles them to wield Genius Points over everyone else's heads. I suspect this is just a small but vocal sub-population in Haskell-land, but it's a really annoying one that seriously turns me off from the language...

sutro 17y ago
+1 for douchewieners.
cageface 17y ago
I actually advocated something analogous to Clojure in 2001 on comp.lang.lisp: http://lib.store.yahoo.net/lib/paulgraham/miles.txt http://lib.store.yahoo.net/lib/paulgraham/miles.txt And was pretty roundly flamed for it. In any case, I totally agree that the community surrounding common lisp is utterly and irreparably toxic and that Rich is right to ignore it and to carefully cultivate a far more civil and friendly community around Clojure. I don't know exactly what it is about functional programming that attracts people that can't tolerate different philosophies. Maybe the more Aspberger-prone coders naturally gravitate towards tools that promise to impose simple, elegant order on the inherently messy world of real-life programming.
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
jrockway 17y ago
Common Lisp's userbase has become one of the most bitter, self-important cesspools of snobbery the programming world has ever seen You are absolutely right here. I am not sure what caused this to happen, but I have never seen a programming community that so actively discourages code reuse. Ask why two libraries don't work together, and the answer is usually, "you shouldn't be using libraries!" Yeah. SBCL is a nice VM, but the community needs to die. Then again, the Haskell folks piss me off for other reasons - after studying such things in the context of real math, it's infuriating to be talked down to by people that just "got" monads and think that their shallow grasp of the concept entitles them to wield Genius Points over everyone else's heads. You're sort of doing the same thing, right? And in reality, the people that actually use Haskell are not like this. Don't let someone that read about Haskell on Reddit yesterday, opened ghci, and typed "let fibs = 1 : 1 : (zipWith (+) fibs $ tail fibs)" put you off. People like to be excited about things, and people that read too many programming blogs get themselves unnecessarily excited about simple things. Then when they sort of understand that simple thing, they feel the need to tell everyone. The clojure community has the "omg monads!" problem too, but that structure isn't particularly useful in Clojure and that is obvious, so people aren't as excited about it. There is plenty of annoying Clojure fanboi-ing, though... but that is true of any language. (OK, there are no Cobol fanbois.)
- ewjordan 17y ago
  You're sort of doing the same thing, right? Totally - my knowledge of Haskell is probably more superficial than most Haskell fans knowledge of category theory, so I'm in no position to fairly poke fun. Consider the jab retracted. :) I think I'm just seething from a recent argument about Haskell's superiority where I was accused of not understanding the almighty Power Of The Monad...really, I just think that the necessary pervasiveness of the pattern indicates that the language is not as powerful as it could be (I raise an eyebrow when I see any pattern used very often anywhere), whereas fanboys sometimes take it as evidence that the language is beautiful - witness the number of Java programmers that think design patterns are proof of Java's perfection. I personally don't like it so much when languages make too many choices for me, and Haskell seems to have that same "protect us from ourselves" philosophy that makes Java so irritating to work with, just with a different enforced paradigm. And in reality, the people that actually use Haskell are not like this. Don't let someone that read about Haskell on Reddit yesterday, opened ghci, and typed "let fibs = 1 : 1 : (zipWith (+) fibs $ tail fibs)" put you off. People like to be excited about things, and people that read too many programming blogs get themselves unnecessarily excited about simple things. Then when they sort of understand that simple thing, they feel the need to tell everyone. Yeah, this is what I pretty much assume, that it's a vocal minority creating most of the noise. I should probably give it a fairer chance, given that a lot of people find it the perfect language for a lot of stuff. Unfortunately at the moment, the only "stuff" I can afford to work on involves DOM manipulation, so it's Javascript or bust for the foreseeable future...
blue1 17y ago
I sincerely don't understand the standard flaming /about/ the CL community. I've read this complaint for years. But my experience is very different. I have been learning CL in the last two years, and I've found that most people (including the usual suspects) are quite helpful. It is true that comp.lang.lisp has a very low tolerance for stupid questions and a bizarre and occasionally harsh sense of humor, but I've never had any problem with it. What I find alarming in the CL community is something different: I feel that there is practically no innovation. It is magnificient but dying culture. The underlying idea is either that CL is a peak of perfectibility, or that the world has no more the force needed to change anything in CL anyway.
- ytinas 17y ago
  The issue with at least the #lisp community is that they are nice so long as you go along with their ideas. As soon as you suggest anything might be done better some other way, out come the thorns.
plinkplonk 17y ago
"the people that know Clojure well and participate in its community are not complete douchewieners," Like this guy? (http://www.bestinclass.dk/index.php/2009/10/python-vs-clojure-evolving/ http://www.bestinclass.dk/index.php/2009/10/python-vs-clojur...) . Seems like a vocal member of the Clojure community and is about the perfect example of a Clojure "douchewiener" (nice word!) that I can think of. Some of the more vocal (and ignorant) members of the clohure community are ex ruby fanbois who jumped off the ruby/RoR bandwagon and moved their babbling proselytizing to Clojure. Yestrday it was all "ooooh mixins, shiny" or " ooooh Open classes shiny" and today it is all " oohh s expressions, shiny!". This is a shame, because Clojure is a nice language that deserves better. But otoh, the quiet and competent Rubyists are breathing easier now. Of course, Rich Hickey and co don't do any unnecessary trumpeting or deprecation of other languages, but there is a lunatic fringe which combines loudness with ignorance in Clojure just as with Haskell (as you point out, correctly). But neither the Haskell loudmouths nor the Clojure loudmouths are as toxic as the Common Lisp loudmouths, so things are relatively better in these languages and that is a good thing.
- weavejester 17y ago
  I have noticed one or two Clojure articles that border on "douchewienery", but only on personal blogs. I haven't noticed any bad behavior on the Clojure group. That said, I haven't noticed that much negativity in the Ruby community either, aside from on Zed Shaw's blog, so perhaps I'm just looking in the wrong places. (Or the right places, depending on one's point of view.)
  - plinkplonk 17y ago
    "I haven't noticed that much negativity in the Ruby community either" Well I interpreted "douchewienery" to be more (ignorance + snobbishness) than being harshly negative. Both Ruby and Clojure have plenty of practitioners who have no deep understanding of other languages (or knowledge of programming language theory or language design skills) combined with a certainty that their language is "the one". Witness all the "Ruby is better than Python" rants. Interestingly, the founders of both languages are the opposite - competent and down to earth. One would think they would be emulated more.
gruseom 17y ago
Common Lisp's userbase has become one of the most bitter, self-important cesspools of snobbery the programming world has ever seen There's a lot of truth to this. C.l.l. is horrible and #lisp is often horrible. Sometimes my jaw drops at what assholes they are. That being said, there are quite a few people using Lisp actively who are nice. The problem is that they (we? I hope) are scattered and relatively isolated. One glimmer of hope to me is that the community around Clozure Common Lisp is sane and functional. If there is to be another renaissance of Common Lisp, I wouldn't be surprised if it grew out of there.

sutro 17y ago

+1 for douchewieners.

cageface 17y ago

I actually advocated something analogous to Clojure in 2001 on comp.lang.lisp: http://lib.store.yahoo.net/lib/paulgraham/miles.txt http://lib.store.yahoo.net/lib/paulgraham/miles.txt And was pretty roundly flamed for it. In any case, I totally agree that the community surrounding common lisp is utterly and irreparably toxic and that Rich is right to ignore it and to carefully cultivate a far more civil and friendly community around Clojure. I don't know exactly what it is about functional programming that attracts people that can't tolerate different philosophies. Maybe the more Aspberger-prone coders naturally gravitate towards tools that promise to impose simple, elegant order on the inherently messy world of real-life programming.

deleted 17y ago
[deleted]

jrockway 17y ago

Common Lisp's userbase has become one of the most bitter, self-important cesspools of snobbery the programming world has ever seen You are absolutely right here. I am not sure what caused this to happen, but I have never seen a programming community that so actively discourages code reuse. Ask why two libraries don't work together, and the answer is usually, "you shouldn't be using libraries!" Yeah. SBCL is a nice VM, but the community needs to die. Then again, the Haskell folks piss me off for other reasons - after studying such things in the context of real math, it's infuriating to be talked down to by people that just "got" monads and think that their shallow grasp of the concept entitles them to wield Genius Points over everyone else's heads. You're sort of doing the same thing, right? And in reality, the people that actually use Haskell are not like this. Don't let someone that read about Haskell on Reddit yesterday, opened ghci, and typed "let fibs = 1 : 1 : (zipWith (+) fibs $ tail fibs)" put you off. People like to be excited about things, and people that read too many programming blogs get themselves unnecessarily excited about simple things. Then when they sort of understand that simple thing, they feel the need to tell everyone. The clojure community has the "omg monads!" problem too, but that structure isn't particularly useful in Clojure and that is obvious, so people aren't as excited about it. There is plenty of annoying Clojure fanboi-ing, though... but that is true of any language. (OK, there are no Cobol fanbois.)

ewjordan 17y ago
You're sort of doing the same thing, right? Totally - my knowledge of Haskell is probably more superficial than most Haskell fans knowledge of category theory, so I'm in no position to fairly poke fun. Consider the jab retracted. :) I think I'm just seething from a recent argument about Haskell's superiority where I was accused of not understanding the almighty Power Of The Monad...really, I just think that the necessary pervasiveness of the pattern indicates that the language is not as powerful as it could be (I raise an eyebrow when I see any pattern used very often anywhere), whereas fanboys sometimes take it as evidence that the language is beautiful - witness the number of Java programmers that think design patterns are proof of Java's perfection. I personally don't like it so much when languages make too many choices for me, and Haskell seems to have that same "protect us from ourselves" philosophy that makes Java so irritating to work with, just with a different enforced paradigm. And in reality, the people that actually use Haskell are not like this. Don't let someone that read about Haskell on Reddit yesterday, opened ghci, and typed "let fibs = 1 : 1 : (zipWith (+) fibs $ tail fibs)" put you off. People like to be excited about things, and people that read too many programming blogs get themselves unnecessarily excited about simple things. Then when they sort of understand that simple thing, they feel the need to tell everyone. Yeah, this is what I pretty much assume, that it's a vocal minority creating most of the noise. I should probably give it a fairer chance, given that a lot of people find it the perfect language for a lot of stuff. Unfortunately at the moment, the only "stuff" I can afford to work on involves DOM manipulation, so it's Javascript or bust for the foreseeable future...

blue1 17y ago

I sincerely don't understand the standard flaming /about/ the CL community. I've read this complaint for years. But my experience is very different. I have been learning CL in the last two years, and I've found that most people (including the usual suspects) are quite helpful. It is true that comp.lang.lisp has a very low tolerance for stupid questions and a bizarre and occasionally harsh sense of humor, but I've never had any problem with it. What I find alarming in the CL community is something different: I feel that there is practically no innovation. It is magnificient but dying culture. The underlying idea is either that CL is a peak of perfectibility, or that the world has no more the force needed to change anything in CL anyway.

ytinas 17y ago
The issue with at least the #lisp community is that they are nice so long as you go along with their ideas. As soon as you suggest anything might be done better some other way, out come the thorns.

plinkplonk 17y ago

"the people that know Clojure well and participate in its community are not complete douchewieners," Like this guy? (http://www.bestinclass.dk/index.php/2009/10/python-vs-clojure-evolving/ http://www.bestinclass.dk/index.php/2009/10/python-vs-clojur...) . Seems like a vocal member of the Clojure community and is about the perfect example of a Clojure "douchewiener" (nice word!) that I can think of. Some of the more vocal (and ignorant) members of the clohure community are ex ruby fanbois who jumped off the ruby/RoR bandwagon and moved their babbling proselytizing to Clojure. Yestrday it was all "ooooh mixins, shiny" or " ooooh Open classes shiny" and today it is all " oohh s expressions, shiny!". This is a shame, because Clojure is a nice language that deserves better. But otoh, the quiet and competent Rubyists are breathing easier now. Of course, Rich Hickey and co don't do any unnecessary trumpeting or deprecation of other languages, but there is a lunatic fringe which combines loudness with ignorance in Clojure just as with Haskell (as you point out, correctly). But neither the Haskell loudmouths nor the Clojure loudmouths are as toxic as the Common Lisp loudmouths, so things are relatively better in these languages and that is a good thing.

weavejester 17y ago
I have noticed one or two Clojure articles that border on "douchewienery", but only on personal blogs. I haven't noticed any bad behavior on the Clojure group. That said, I haven't noticed that much negativity in the Ruby community either, aside from on Zed Shaw's blog, so perhaps I'm just looking in the wrong places. (Or the right places, depending on one's point of view.)
- plinkplonk 17y ago
  "I haven't noticed that much negativity in the Ruby community either" Well I interpreted "douchewienery" to be more (ignorance + snobbishness) than being harshly negative. Both Ruby and Clojure have plenty of practitioners who have no deep understanding of other languages (or knowledge of programming language theory or language design skills) combined with a certainty that their language is "the one". Witness all the "Ruby is better than Python" rants. Interestingly, the founders of both languages are the opposite - competent and down to earth. One would think they would be emulated more.

gruseom 17y ago

Common Lisp's userbase has become one of the most bitter, self-important cesspools of snobbery the programming world has ever seen There's a lot of truth to this. C.l.l. is horrible and #lisp is often horrible. Sometimes my jaw drops at what assholes they are. That being said, there are quite a few people using Lisp actively who are nice. The problem is that they (we? I hope) are scattered and relatively isolated. One glimmer of hope to me is that the community around Clozure Common Lisp is sane and functional. If there is to be another renaissance of Common Lisp, I wouldn't be surprised if it grew out of there.