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For a 2005 article, this is totally awesome, as well as that Steve Yegge response. But in 2016, it's hard for me not to get excited about what's seeming like Cl

For a 2005 article, this is totally awesome, as well as that Steve Yegge response. But in 2016, it's hard for me not to get excited about what's seeming like Clojure's upward trajectory into the mainstream and want to jump on board 100%. To paraphrase Rich Hickey, Lisp and immutable functional programming totally rock, and the JVM and Javascript just reach (ClojureScript). As our systems get bigger and more quality is demanded from our software, it'd be so cool if we could get behind this as a standard, in all the growing technology fields -- web and mobile (Om.next for React and React Native), big data, AI/machine learning, Dockerization/containerization and even decentralized stuff (Pelle Braendgaard's Cloth library for Ethereum is a start, and I was just talking with some awesome people in the Clojure Slack channel working on Boot tasks for IPFS, and soon the Golem Network project will be launched which will be super dope). Hell, even designers can start designing in Clojure now. It's just Simple, and as the community grows, rallying behind it is only going to get Easier. People were raving with React Native about how JavaScript developers could now all the sudden start coding mobile apps. How cool would it be if there was just one awesome language, the one true immutable functional Lisp, where everybody in tech could understand each other and collaborate? I genuinely think this is Lisp's revenge (shoutout David Nolen!). It's been tough for me as a new developer to learn this stuff without nearly as many resources as there are in the Python and Ruby communities for beginners, but there's no question this is the (near-term) future. Plus, a lot of that stuff just complects everything anyways and doesn't have to apply anymore (read: mutable state, no Value on Values). Let's keep it Lispy. ;)

wyager 10y ago
On the other functional JavaScript side of things, there are also Elm and Purescript. They are both pure functional, and both are ML-inspired (strongly typed, equational, ADTs with pattern matching, etc.). Elm is a fair bit easier to get started with, but has a substantially weaker type system and fewer useful functional features. Purescript is a fair bit more difficult to get started with, but has a substantially more powerful type system and lots of useful features like effect types. Personally, I greatly prefer ML style languages to lisp style languages. I get fed up with all the parentheses in lisps.
- michaelsbradley 10y ago
  BuckleScript is worth a look too: http://bloomberg.github.io/bucklescript/ http://bloomberg.github.io/bucklescript/ It's in the OCaml-to-JS family.
qwertyuiop924 10y ago
...No. Clojure is lisp, but it's a weird little language, and most of us lispers schemers aren't really totally happy with it. We're used to more flexability, less functionalism, and less opinionation. Plus, Clojure's equality and conses don't work at all the way a lisper would expect, and the conses are way less useful. There's a reason there will never be a universal language.
- DigitalJack 10y ago
  As a clojure fan, I agree about conses. It's rare to use something like that. Personally I'm happy equality doesn't work like common lisp. See here for a post explaining equality in CL: http://eli.thegreenplace.net/2004/08/08/equality-in-lisp http://eli.thegreenplace.net/2004/08/08/equality-in-lisp It's old and I don't use common lisp, so please correct me or the post if needed. I've tried to get into lisp numerous times. Clojure was the one that clicked for me. I can't say if that's because of clojure or because it was just the right time for me after N times trying to get lisp. Every now and then I poke at a scheme or CL. Scheme seems do-able for me, particularly Chicken Scheme, but I everytime I try CL, I come across what seems like too many functions to do what it seems like one function should do. Whenever I see something like SETQ, etc., that's a big turn off for me. On the other hand, I really dislike Clojure startup times. Doesn't matter for server/long running apps, but when you are debugging or iterating, it gets to be a pain. There are some mitigations with their own set of issues. Pixie and Hy have been brought to my attention. Pixie seems more or less abandoned, but Hy looks interesting. I haven't been able to tell from the docs if it has clojure datastructures (which are the best part of clojure), but Pixie does. So maybe sometime I'll try to bring those over to Hy and see if they get accepted.
  - qwertyuiop924 10y ago
    No, what I mean is that clojure's conses are fairly useless compared to the conses of CL and Scheme. Also, all programming languages implicitly have most of those equality operators. But yeah, Scheme's equality is a bit cleaner. Not a super fan of Clojure datastructures. If I want to modify my cdr, than let my modify my cdr.
  - 10y ago

wyager 10y ago

On the other functional JavaScript side of things, there are also Elm and Purescript. They are both pure functional, and both are ML-inspired (strongly typed, equational, ADTs with pattern matching, etc.). Elm is a fair bit easier to get started with, but has a substantially weaker type system and fewer useful functional features. Purescript is a fair bit more difficult to get started with, but has a substantially more powerful type system and lots of useful features like effect types. Personally, I greatly prefer ML style languages to lisp style languages. I get fed up with all the parentheses in lisps.

michaelsbradley 10y ago
BuckleScript is worth a look too: http://bloomberg.github.io/bucklescript/ http://bloomberg.github.io/bucklescript/ It's in the OCaml-to-JS family.

qwertyuiop924 10y ago

...No. Clojure is lisp, but it's a weird little language, and most of us lispers schemers aren't really totally happy with it. We're used to more flexability, less functionalism, and less opinionation. Plus, Clojure's equality and conses don't work at all the way a lisper would expect, and the conses are way less useful. There's a reason there will never be a universal language.

DigitalJack 10y ago
As a clojure fan, I agree about conses. It's rare to use something like that. Personally I'm happy equality doesn't work like common lisp. See here for a post explaining equality in CL: http://eli.thegreenplace.net/2004/08/08/equality-in-lisp http://eli.thegreenplace.net/2004/08/08/equality-in-lisp It's old and I don't use common lisp, so please correct me or the post if needed. I've tried to get into lisp numerous times. Clojure was the one that clicked for me. I can't say if that's because of clojure or because it was just the right time for me after N times trying to get lisp. Every now and then I poke at a scheme or CL. Scheme seems do-able for me, particularly Chicken Scheme, but I everytime I try CL, I come across what seems like too many functions to do what it seems like one function should do. Whenever I see something like SETQ, etc., that's a big turn off for me. On the other hand, I really dislike Clojure startup times. Doesn't matter for server/long running apps, but when you are debugging or iterating, it gets to be a pain. There are some mitigations with their own set of issues. Pixie and Hy have been brought to my attention. Pixie seems more or less abandoned, but Hy looks interesting. I haven't been able to tell from the docs if it has clojure datastructures (which are the best part of clojure), but Pixie does. So maybe sometime I'll try to bring those over to Hy and see if they get accepted.
- qwertyuiop924 10y ago
  No, what I mean is that clojure's conses are fairly useless compared to the conses of CL and Scheme. Also, all programming languages implicitly have most of those equality operators. But yeah, Scheme's equality is a bit cleaner. Not a super fan of Clojure datastructures. If I want to modify my cdr, than let my modify my cdr.
- 10y ago