16 ms·

State of Clojure 2016 – Results and Analysis

249 points by fnordsensei 10y ago

doesnotexist 10y ago
> What has been most frustrating or has prevented you from using clojurescript more than you do now? The top answer here was "Using JavaЅcript libs with ClojureScript / Google Closure", which was a new choice we added this year. Which the clojurescript compiler devs have addressed in recently released alpha features including extern inference: https://clojurescript.org/guides/externs https://clojurescript.org/guides/externs Is there a well maintained and high quality repository of third party externs, as there is in the form of DefinitelyTyped for typescript type definitions? Would such a thing subsume https://cljsjs.github.io/ https://cljsjs.github.io/ ?
- hellofunk 10y ago
  > Which the clojurescript compiler devs have addressed in recently released alpha features Which the article mentions.
sdsgshldghls 10y ago
Sums it up - Clojure is ace, just needs better error messages, and Spec will sort that one out Oh and Spec is a godsend.
dizzystar 10y ago
Personal story. I originally used Clojure about 5 years ago, built a few websites with it, along with a few other fun projects. My blog is still in Clojure, but nothing impressive. About 6 weeks ago, I fired up Emacs and tried out Clojure for a new project, and I have to say, it's definitely different and all of the changes are for the better. 1- Cider. I don't know how I lived without this years ago. 2- Security. Ring comes with CRSF tokens by default. Friend was kind of a pain to use, and this meant that everyone was rolling their own back then. This isn't an issue anymore. That Bedra talk really gave the community some focus, and I'm glad everyone has been working on it. 3- I'm glad to see that libraries have been stable, improved upon, and not abandoned. While this includes lein, of course, so many things that aren't integral, like hiccup, overtone, etc, have been kept up to date for the new versions. 4- Better integration of libraries. 5- Much much much better build experience. Back then, run lein and have fun figuring out what you have to change in what file to get everything up and running. This is no longer the case, everything just works. Of course, there are still some issues, but I just wanted to focus on the good stuff here.
herrvogel- 10y ago
Does anyone know, what the second most given answer for the question "What Clojure, ClojureScript, or ClojureCLR community forums have you used or attended in the last year?" is? The anwser is cut off. Edit: typo
- puredanger 10y ago
  There is a link to the full results at the bottom of the article. That answer is "Clojure, ClojureScript, or ClojureCLR google group mailing list" https://www.surveymonkey.com/results/SM-7K6NXJY3/ https://www.surveymonkey.com/results/SM-7K6NXJY3/
  - herrvogel- 10y ago
    Oh, I missed that link. Thank you!
jakebasile 10y ago
Love seeing Clojure getting more usage and exposure. The more companies that use it, the more people will give it a chance, and it hopefully snowballs from there. Selfishly, this also means there's more of a chance I'll get to use it in my career. It is easily the best language/platform I have used, and it is a joy to work with, Leiningen and Figwheel especially. Being able to use this wonderful language through the entire stack is a bonus. The drawbacks listed are real, but are getting better all the time. Spec goes a long way to improving error messages.
bellp1234 10y ago
Curious if Clojure for CLR has tail call optimization given the CLR supports it?
- systems 10y ago
  i dont think clojure for clr is maintained much
  - puredanger 10y ago
    The CLR port has been maintained and is up to date with the latest stable version of the JVM Clojure version. https://github.com/clojure/clojure-clr/blob/master/changes.md https://github.com/clojure/clojure-clr/blob/master/changes.m...
  - ledgerdev 10y ago
    David Miller has been keeping it up to date for years, his efforts are not well enough appreciated.
- ledgerdev 10y ago
  Doubtful given it's built with C# which is pretty directly ported from the Java implementation. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1118986 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1118986 http://stackoverflow.com/questions/491376/why-doesnt-net-c-optimize-for-tail-call-recursion http://stackoverflow.com/questions/491376/why-doesnt-net-c-o...
brilliantcode 10y ago
Makes sense to see heavy usage in financial industry. Cognitect's Datomic database is perfect for the environment-datalog queries which work really well with time series data. Having an immutable audit trail of all atomic operation done on the database is taking the best out of what blockchain has been marketing. It also seems like there's some demand to fund an open source version of Datomic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13583620 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13583620 Crowdfund open source Datomic alternative here: http://letsopensource.com http://letsopensource.com
- espeed 10y ago
  NB: Datomic is not "append only" (when it was first released, I thought it was too): Note that accumulate-only is a semantic property, and is not the same as append-only, which is a structural property describing how data is written. Datomic is not an append-only system, and does not have the performance characteristics associated with append-only systems. Source: http://docs.datomic.com/indexes.html http://docs.datomic.com/indexes.html
  - brilliantcode 10y ago
    I updated my original post to reflect that but I'm still not sure what the difference is.
- ledgerdev 10y ago
  A full open version would be a major undertaking. What I've been thinking about about is step in the datomic direction, built on top of plain old postgres that wouldn't attempt full time travel, but would use the same general schema/model with history. It's seems crazy that in 2017 that we don't have a decent general option for most business apps to store facts that doesn't over-write the past as is done in current sql databases.
  - yogthos 10y ago
    This project might be of interest actually https://github.com/datacrypt-project/hitchhiker-tree https://github.com/datacrypt-project/hitchhiker-tree
dfischer 10y ago
I really want to love Clojure. I've been playing with it recently and I still have some hopes for it. I am comparing it to Elixir for my next language of love. I have a lot of experience with Javascript/Node and secondly Ruby. I want to embrace a functional paradigm. I want to lean on Clojure because of the versatility of also being able to leverage ClojureScript. So far I have hit some bumps that are a bit frustrating. 1. I changed too many files at once and the stack trace error I got gave me literally 0 clue on what was wrong. It was such a feeling of doom that it scared me on how to debug Clojure apps. The stack trace was full of Java errors and nothing pointing me in the direction of where the app was failing from Clojure's perspective. 2. Momentum of Web-Development and embracing new technology. I really believe in GraphQL and there isn't much support or conversations with using GraphQL with Clojure and ClojureScript. 3. I want to code Lisp better, but I'm not sure how to learn all the tricks on using Paredit. I use Spacemacs in Vim mode and a lot of the tutorials I see are of course in Emacs bindings so getting the know-how of navigating s-expressions in Spacemacs evil mode is quite the challenge but I'm going for it. 4. Boot up time is lame but it is what it is. `lein run` then `lein cljsbuild auto` can take ~20-30 seconds on a relatively fresh project on my MBA. After the initial boot time it's fine though. Overall I have my head up high but those are some of the things I'm struggling with. I really want to love Clojure/lisp. I worry most about the community not being large enough to share examples of how to do new things. Which of course can be argued for the better (not a trendy community) but it instills worry nonetheless, especially when one really wants to adopt a tech all around (like GraphQL). I have an argument in my head that shouts "Well, if there's so much momentum in Javascript/Node for that ecosystem then might as well use that. Or even Elixir with Absinthe" – in the end it's about productivity right? :) Anyway rambling at this point.
- yogthos 10y ago
  I think some of your frustrations might stem from your workflow. You really have to use the REPL to get the most out of Clojure development. For example, you should never change a bunch of code in different files and then try to run it and hope it works. Clojure workflow would be to change a particular function, send it to the REPL, see that it does what you want, then change the next function, and so on. ClojureScript equivalents to GraphQL would be Om Next http://hueypetersen.com/posts/2016/02/13/om-next-from-a-relay-graphql-perspective/ http://hueypetersen.com/posts/2016/02/13/om-next-from-a-rela... and and Posh with Reagent https://github.com/mpdairy/posh https://github.com/mpdairy/posh It's the same concept expressed in a Clojure idiomatic way. I would highly recommend using Vim fireplace, Cursive, or Atom to start learning Clojure. Emacs is a very complex editor that takes a lot of time investment to be productive in. There's no reason to try and learn it while also learning Clojure. I've been developing Clojure professionally for the past 6 years and I've never used Emacs for that.
bpicolo 10y ago
I think the docs have a lot to gain. If you take a look at https://clojuredocs.org/clojure.core/reify https://clojuredocs.org/clojure.core/reify as an example, it's pretty much impossible to figure out what the heck reify does by reading that page. That's not universally the case, but definitely a frustration. The examples are frequently the only way I can begin to figure out the usage of something at all (and they're typically the simplest-case example). I love examples in general, but it still speaks to the difficulty of parsing through some of those function documentations.
- nilved 10y ago
  https://www.conj.io/store/v1/org.clojure/clojure/1.8.0/clj/clojure.core/reify https://www.conj.io/store/v1/org.clojure/clojure/1.8.0/clj/c... clojuredocs.org is just one community-powered docs site; there are several.
  - bpicolo 10y ago
    And that site has the exact same code-generated documentation, just with some different CSS. They just parse the clojure source. https://github.com/clojure/clojure/blob/f572a60262852af68cdb561784a517143a5847cf/src/clj/clojure/core_deftype.clj#L71 https://github.com/clojure/clojure/blob/f572a60262852af68cdb...
    - yogthos 10y ago
      ClojureDocs isn't just generated documentation, but provides usage examples. Here's the page for reify https://clojuredocs.org/clojure.core/reify https://clojuredocs.org/clojure.core/reify that illustrates the usage.
      - bpicolo 10y ago
        Yeah, that's the original page I linked, see my first comment. : )
- projectileboy 10y ago
hammerandtongs 10y ago
One of the things that always stops me pushing too far into clojure is memory footprint. Does anyone have any suggestions or resources for how to keep the upfront memory cost of the jvm to a minimum (and monitor that its still within bounds over time). 128m is not acceptable, for my uses clojure would need to compete with go and rust which I can deliver 10-20m running in memory (and lightning fast). I don't expect 10-20m but 10x doesn't work for me. Think of deploying to Sandstorm.io as my goal ie small personal servers.
- yogthos 10y ago
  I'm working on a port of the Ring stack to Node.js for that exact reason. https://github.com/macchiato-framework/macchiato-core https://github.com/macchiato-framework/macchiato-core I wrote about the motivation for the project in some detail here http://yogthos.net/posts/2016-11-30-Macchiato.html http://yogthos.net/posts/2016-11-30-Macchiato.html You can see some example projects here https://github.com/macchiato-framework/examples https://github.com/macchiato-framework/examples I've already ported some of my JVM services to it, and I've been very happy with the results. There's a Clojurians slack channel #macchiato where project discussions are happening, and others have been using it successfully as well. I don't see Node.js as a replacement for the JVM, but it is a better fit for certain types of applications. Being able to develop Clojure using essentially the same stack on both platforms means being able to choose the right tool for the job.
  - hammerandtongs 10y ago
    I think it's really cool that you are pushing on this. I'll probably pursue the jvm for a little while longer but I can see the attraction to clojurescript for this and will check in down the road.
- pron 10y ago
  By default, the JVM will use all the memory you give it. Have you tried simply setting a small maximum heap size? You can use VisualVM to visualize the heap and GC. Deep monitoring is one of the JVM's greatest strengths.
cygned 10y ago
We have a node.js monolith that is currently being moved to AWS and split into microservices. Since I am the tech lead, I am in the position to decide that we are going to use Clojure where it makes sense; that is, everything that's being rewritten or added. Didn't regret it yet (and I think we won't later, either).
- yogthos 10y ago
  You might be interested in a project I started recently that's a port of the Ring stack to Node.js https://github.com/macchiato-framework/macchiato-core https://github.com/macchiato-framework/macchiato-core My team is moving in the opposite direction with some of our services. We currently run everything on the JVM with Clojure, but now we're experimenting running some services using Node.js due to its lower footprint.
jraines 10y ago
I love Clojure and have happily been using it in production for 2+ years. Maybe I'm just used to the error messages, but I'm surprised "finding libraries" wasn't a higher-rated pain point. In many languages (at least in the web dev world) if you find a library that hasn't had commits in a few years, you can safely assume it's out of date. Not so with Clojure, and while this is due to two Good Things -- the stability of the language and the general avoidance of do-everything libs/frameworks -- it still makes it a bit hard to evaluate whether it's a good idea to rely on a given open source library. And good luck sorting through all the ring-<whatever> middleware to find the right one or right mix for you. That said, I wouldn't go back to non-Clojure tools (for me that's Rails & JS) for most of my use cases (still awaiting a bit of maturation of the react-native wrappers for doing mobile apps. It's possible the benefits already outweigh the compilation/reload time cost, though).
- owebmaster 10y ago
  Do you know re-natal? It is very good with a hot reload better than webpack (using figwheel).
sandover 10y ago
> This year we held steady in our response rate as 2,420 of you took the time As a Clojure fan, I find the lack of growth a little disturbing. Why isn't it 20,000?
- puredanger 10y ago
  For the most part, because people don't answer multi-page surveys. :) We know that the number of respondents is only a fraction of the total number of users on any of the platforms where the survey was posted (Slack, reddit, mailing list, web sites, etc). 2015 was the first year we had an active Slack community (and it broke to HN that year for a bit) and that drove some increases. I would caution against trying to draw any hard conclusions just from the number of respondents.
- nickik 10y ago
  As a long term Clojure user I have done this survey for years, but I don't think I did the last two times. Its just not that important anymore.
pryelluw 10y ago
Whats the job market like for Clojure? Opinions and experiences please.
pandocentum 10y ago
I am a Java developer by day and I fell in love with Clojure sometime ago. I have to give the language credit, because it taught me some new important concepts. After a break of couple of months (a year?) I went back to write some simple Clojure stuff - only to find out that the problem with error messages still persists: it's really easy to misuse some function here and there - especially if you don't use them on a daily basis - and sometimes tracking the actual source of the error/exception is almost impossible, even in a such developer-friendly IDE as Cursive. I can see how that can be absolutely discouraging for the beginners, even for people that are coming from Java backgrounds. Until that core problem is not fixed, it will never become a mainstream choice of a language.
- puredanger 10y ago
  The new spec library is being applied to clojure.core and will provide more precise errors at the point where an invalid value is introduced, rather than several layers down the stack.
- nickik 10y ago
  You are right. It is a big problem. Its hard to do because you want to avoid complicated parsing and compilers. You don't want to put in lots of costume code. Finally, I think the next version of Clojure will be able to make a big step. Spec improves multible problem points, error messages is one of them. It will take some time until the tooling around Spec is ready, but the data that spec provides is very nice for tools.
espeed 10y ago
Is there a good Scheme-to-Clojure transpiler (to convert Scheme libs to Clojure libs)?

249 points by fnordsensei 10y ago

> What has been most frustrating or has prevented you from using clojurescript more than you do now? The top answer here was "Using JavaЅcript libs with ClojureScript / Google Closure", which was a new choice we added this year. Which the clojurescript compiler devs have addressed in recently released alpha features including extern inference: https://clojurescript.org/guides/externs https://clojurescript.org/guides/externs Is there a well maintained and high quality repository of third party externs, as there is in the form of DefinitelyTyped for typescript type definitions? Would such a thing subsume https://cljsjs.github.io/ https://cljsjs.github.io/ ?

hellofunk 10y ago
> Which the clojurescript compiler devs have addressed in recently released alpha features Which the article mentions.

sdsgshldghls 10y ago

Sums it up - Clojure is ace, just needs better error messages, and Spec will sort that one out Oh and Spec is a godsend.

dizzystar 10y ago

Personal story. I originally used Clojure about 5 years ago, built a few websites with it, along with a few other fun projects. My blog is still in Clojure, but nothing impressive. About 6 weeks ago, I fired up Emacs and tried out Clojure for a new project, and I have to say, it's definitely different and all of the changes are for the better. 1- Cider. I don't know how I lived without this years ago. 2- Security. Ring comes with CRSF tokens by default. Friend was kind of a pain to use, and this meant that everyone was rolling their own back then. This isn't an issue anymore. That Bedra talk really gave the community some focus, and I'm glad everyone has been working on it. 3- I'm glad to see that libraries have been stable, improved upon, and not abandoned. While this includes lein, of course, so many things that aren't integral, like hiccup, overtone, etc, have been kept up to date for the new versions. 4- Better integration of libraries. 5- Much much much better build experience. Back then, run lein and have fun figuring out what you have to change in what file to get everything up and running. This is no longer the case, everything just works. Of course, there are still some issues, but I just wanted to focus on the good stuff here.

herrvogel- 10y ago

Does anyone know, what the second most given answer for the question "What Clojure, ClojureScript, or ClojureCLR community forums have you used or attended in the last year?" is? The anwser is cut off. Edit: typo

puredanger 10y ago
There is a link to the full results at the bottom of the article. That answer is "Clojure, ClojureScript, or ClojureCLR google group mailing list" https://www.surveymonkey.com/results/SM-7K6NXJY3/ https://www.surveymonkey.com/results/SM-7K6NXJY3/
- herrvogel- 10y ago
  Oh, I missed that link. Thank you!

jakebasile 10y ago

Love seeing Clojure getting more usage and exposure. The more companies that use it, the more people will give it a chance, and it hopefully snowballs from there. Selfishly, this also means there's more of a chance I'll get to use it in my career. It is easily the best language/platform I have used, and it is a joy to work with, Leiningen and Figwheel especially. Being able to use this wonderful language through the entire stack is a bonus. The drawbacks listed are real, but are getting better all the time. Spec goes a long way to improving error messages.

bellp1234 10y ago

Curious if Clojure for CLR has tail call optimization given the CLR supports it?

systems 10y ago
i dont think clojure for clr is maintained much
- puredanger 10y ago
  The CLR port has been maintained and is up to date with the latest stable version of the JVM Clojure version. https://github.com/clojure/clojure-clr/blob/master/changes.md https://github.com/clojure/clojure-clr/blob/master/changes.m...
- ledgerdev 10y ago
  David Miller has been keeping it up to date for years, his efforts are not well enough appreciated.
ledgerdev 10y ago
Doubtful given it's built with C# which is pretty directly ported from the Java implementation. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1118986 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1118986 http://stackoverflow.com/questions/491376/why-doesnt-net-c-optimize-for-tail-call-recursion http://stackoverflow.com/questions/491376/why-doesnt-net-c-o...

brilliantcode 10y ago

Makes sense to see heavy usage in financial industry. Cognitect's Datomic database is perfect for the environment-datalog queries which work really well with time series data. Having an immutable audit trail of all atomic operation done on the database is taking the best out of what blockchain has been marketing. It also seems like there's some demand to fund an open source version of Datomic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13583620 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13583620 Crowdfund open source Datomic alternative here: http://letsopensource.com http://letsopensource.com

espeed 10y ago
NB: Datomic is not "append only" (when it was first released, I thought it was too): Note that accumulate-only is a semantic property, and is not the same as append-only, which is a structural property describing how data is written. Datomic is not an append-only system, and does not have the performance characteristics associated with append-only systems. Source: http://docs.datomic.com/indexes.html http://docs.datomic.com/indexes.html
- brilliantcode 10y ago
  I updated my original post to reflect that but I'm still not sure what the difference is.
ledgerdev 10y ago
A full open version would be a major undertaking. What I've been thinking about about is step in the datomic direction, built on top of plain old postgres that wouldn't attempt full time travel, but would use the same general schema/model with history. It's seems crazy that in 2017 that we don't have a decent general option for most business apps to store facts that doesn't over-write the past as is done in current sql databases.
- yogthos 10y ago
  This project might be of interest actually https://github.com/datacrypt-project/hitchhiker-tree https://github.com/datacrypt-project/hitchhiker-tree

dfischer 10y ago

I really want to love Clojure. I've been playing with it recently and I still have some hopes for it. I am comparing it to Elixir for my next language of love. I have a lot of experience with Javascript/Node and secondly Ruby. I want to embrace a functional paradigm. I want to lean on Clojure because of the versatility of also being able to leverage ClojureScript. So far I have hit some bumps that are a bit frustrating. 1. I changed too many files at once and the stack trace error I got gave me literally 0 clue on what was wrong. It was such a feeling of doom that it scared me on how to debug Clojure apps. The stack trace was full of Java errors and nothing pointing me in the direction of where the app was failing from Clojure's perspective. 2. Momentum of Web-Development and embracing new technology. I really believe in GraphQL and there isn't much support or conversations with using GraphQL with Clojure and ClojureScript. 3. I want to code Lisp better, but I'm not sure how to learn all the tricks on using Paredit. I use Spacemacs in Vim mode and a lot of the tutorials I see are of course in Emacs bindings so getting the know-how of navigating s-expressions in Spacemacs evil mode is quite the challenge but I'm going for it. 4. Boot up time is lame but it is what it is. `lein run` then `lein cljsbuild auto` can take ~20-30 seconds on a relatively fresh project on my MBA. After the initial boot time it's fine though. Overall I have my head up high but those are some of the things I'm struggling with. I really want to love Clojure/lisp. I worry most about the community not being large enough to share examples of how to do new things. Which of course can be argued for the better (not a trendy community) but it instills worry nonetheless, especially when one really wants to adopt a tech all around (like GraphQL). I have an argument in my head that shouts "Well, if there's so much momentum in Javascript/Node for that ecosystem then might as well use that. Or even Elixir with Absinthe" – in the end it's about productivity right? :) Anyway rambling at this point.

yogthos 10y ago
I think some of your frustrations might stem from your workflow. You really have to use the REPL to get the most out of Clojure development. For example, you should never change a bunch of code in different files and then try to run it and hope it works. Clojure workflow would be to change a particular function, send it to the REPL, see that it does what you want, then change the next function, and so on. ClojureScript equivalents to GraphQL would be Om Next http://hueypetersen.com/posts/2016/02/13/om-next-from-a-relay-graphql-perspective/ http://hueypetersen.com/posts/2016/02/13/om-next-from-a-rela... and and Posh with Reagent https://github.com/mpdairy/posh https://github.com/mpdairy/posh It's the same concept expressed in a Clojure idiomatic way. I would highly recommend using Vim fireplace, Cursive, or Atom to start learning Clojure. Emacs is a very complex editor that takes a lot of time investment to be productive in. There's no reason to try and learn it while also learning Clojure. I've been developing Clojure professionally for the past 6 years and I've never used Emacs for that.

bpicolo 10y ago

I think the docs have a lot to gain. If you take a look at https://clojuredocs.org/clojure.core/reify https://clojuredocs.org/clojure.core/reify as an example, it's pretty much impossible to figure out what the heck reify does by reading that page. That's not universally the case, but definitely a frustration. The examples are frequently the only way I can begin to figure out the usage of something at all (and they're typically the simplest-case example). I love examples in general, but it still speaks to the difficulty of parsing through some of those function documentations.

nilved 10y ago
https://www.conj.io/store/v1/org.clojure/clojure/1.8.0/clj/clojure.core/reify https://www.conj.io/store/v1/org.clojure/clojure/1.8.0/clj/c... clojuredocs.org is just one community-powered docs site; there are several.
- bpicolo 10y ago
  And that site has the exact same code-generated documentation, just with some different CSS. They just parse the clojure source. https://github.com/clojure/clojure/blob/f572a60262852af68cdb561784a517143a5847cf/src/clj/clojure/core_deftype.clj#L71 https://github.com/clojure/clojure/blob/f572a60262852af68cdb...
  - yogthos 10y ago
    ClojureDocs isn't just generated documentation, but provides usage examples. Here's the page for reify https://clojuredocs.org/clojure.core/reify https://clojuredocs.org/clojure.core/reify that illustrates the usage.
    - bpicolo 10y ago
      Yeah, that's the original page I linked, see my first comment. : )
projectileboy 10y ago

hammerandtongs 10y ago

One of the things that always stops me pushing too far into clojure is memory footprint. Does anyone have any suggestions or resources for how to keep the upfront memory cost of the jvm to a minimum (and monitor that its still within bounds over time). 128m is not acceptable, for my uses clojure would need to compete with go and rust which I can deliver 10-20m running in memory (and lightning fast). I don't expect 10-20m but 10x doesn't work for me. Think of deploying to Sandstorm.io as my goal ie small personal servers.

yogthos 10y ago
I'm working on a port of the Ring stack to Node.js for that exact reason. https://github.com/macchiato-framework/macchiato-core https://github.com/macchiato-framework/macchiato-core I wrote about the motivation for the project in some detail here http://yogthos.net/posts/2016-11-30-Macchiato.html http://yogthos.net/posts/2016-11-30-Macchiato.html You can see some example projects here https://github.com/macchiato-framework/examples https://github.com/macchiato-framework/examples I've already ported some of my JVM services to it, and I've been very happy with the results. There's a Clojurians slack channel #macchiato where project discussions are happening, and others have been using it successfully as well. I don't see Node.js as a replacement for the JVM, but it is a better fit for certain types of applications. Being able to develop Clojure using essentially the same stack on both platforms means being able to choose the right tool for the job.
- hammerandtongs 10y ago
  I think it's really cool that you are pushing on this. I'll probably pursue the jvm for a little while longer but I can see the attraction to clojurescript for this and will check in down the road.
pron 10y ago
By default, the JVM will use all the memory you give it. Have you tried simply setting a small maximum heap size? You can use VisualVM to visualize the heap and GC. Deep monitoring is one of the JVM's greatest strengths.

cygned 10y ago

We have a node.js monolith that is currently being moved to AWS and split into microservices. Since I am the tech lead, I am in the position to decide that we are going to use Clojure where it makes sense; that is, everything that's being rewritten or added. Didn't regret it yet (and I think we won't later, either).

yogthos 10y ago
You might be interested in a project I started recently that's a port of the Ring stack to Node.js https://github.com/macchiato-framework/macchiato-core https://github.com/macchiato-framework/macchiato-core My team is moving in the opposite direction with some of our services. We currently run everything on the JVM with Clojure, but now we're experimenting running some services using Node.js due to its lower footprint.

jraines 10y ago

I love Clojure and have happily been using it in production for 2+ years. Maybe I'm just used to the error messages, but I'm surprised "finding libraries" wasn't a higher-rated pain point. In many languages (at least in the web dev world) if you find a library that hasn't had commits in a few years, you can safely assume it's out of date. Not so with Clojure, and while this is due to two Good Things -- the stability of the language and the general avoidance of do-everything libs/frameworks -- it still makes it a bit hard to evaluate whether it's a good idea to rely on a given open source library. And good luck sorting through all the ring-<whatever> middleware to find the right one or right mix for you. That said, I wouldn't go back to non-Clojure tools (for me that's Rails & JS) for most of my use cases (still awaiting a bit of maturation of the react-native wrappers for doing mobile apps. It's possible the benefits already outweigh the compilation/reload time cost, though).

owebmaster 10y ago
Do you know re-natal? It is very good with a hot reload better than webpack (using figwheel).

sandover 10y ago

> This year we held steady in our response rate as 2,420 of you took the time As a Clojure fan, I find the lack of growth a little disturbing. Why isn't it 20,000?

puredanger 10y ago
For the most part, because people don't answer multi-page surveys. :) We know that the number of respondents is only a fraction of the total number of users on any of the platforms where the survey was posted (Slack, reddit, mailing list, web sites, etc). 2015 was the first year we had an active Slack community (and it broke to HN that year for a bit) and that drove some increases. I would caution against trying to draw any hard conclusions just from the number of respondents.
nickik 10y ago
As a long term Clojure user I have done this survey for years, but I don't think I did the last two times. Its just not that important anymore.

pryelluw 10y ago

Whats the job market like for Clojure? Opinions and experiences please.

pandocentum 10y ago

I am a Java developer by day and I fell in love with Clojure sometime ago. I have to give the language credit, because it taught me some new important concepts. After a break of couple of months (a year?) I went back to write some simple Clojure stuff - only to find out that the problem with error messages still persists: it's really easy to misuse some function here and there - especially if you don't use them on a daily basis - and sometimes tracking the actual source of the error/exception is almost impossible, even in a such developer-friendly IDE as Cursive. I can see how that can be absolutely discouraging for the beginners, even for people that are coming from Java backgrounds. Until that core problem is not fixed, it will never become a mainstream choice of a language.

puredanger 10y ago
The new spec library is being applied to clojure.core and will provide more precise errors at the point where an invalid value is introduced, rather than several layers down the stack.
nickik 10y ago
You are right. It is a big problem. Its hard to do because you want to avoid complicated parsing and compilers. You don't want to put in lots of costume code. Finally, I think the next version of Clojure will be able to make a big step. Spec improves multible problem points, error messages is one of them. It will take some time until the tooling around Spec is ready, but the data that spec provides is very nice for tools.

espeed 10y ago

Is there a good Scheme-to-Clojure transpiler (to convert Scheme libs to Clojure libs)?