4 ms·

At some point it felt like Clojure was the future, the new thing, so amazingly better - was that just a feeling of novelty? Or something went wrong with its use

by swah 10y ago

At some point it felt like Clojure was the future, the new thing, so amazingly better - was that just a feeling of novelty? Or something went wrong with its use case? Of course, these days its about Rust, Swift and LLVM, but it doesn't have those lispy properties we love...

afandian 10y ago
I've been using it for 3 years and as I get my teeth further into my current project, I am grateful for Clojure every day.
chousuke 10y ago
I think Clojure is doing just fine. I've seen it used in "real-world" proprietary software (custom-made for a client by a third party). It's just usually packaged as a jar file, so no-one notices unless you look for certain tells.
nepeckman 10y ago
I feel like every new language has a honeymoon period. Clojure is still alive and well (and growing bigger consistently) but it doesn't have that new language hype anymore.
jcadam 10y ago
Currently using Clojure on a side-project. It makes me so much more productive -- a real win when I don't have a ton of hours to devote to a project due to also having a day job :) If only I could find a day job using Clojure...
rlander 10y ago
I felt like that, like Clojure was the future, around 2009/2010. But then Java libraries and their impossible stack traces got in the way. I've been waiting for a native Clojure implementation (or on top of Python or the Erlang VM) ever since.
- pjmlp 10y ago
  There are few abandoned attempts. Writing from scratch those Java libraries, including a good quality AOT compiler and GC is not something to do as hobby on the weekends.
  - branchly2 10y ago
    Don't need all those Java libraries if you've got good FFI with C libraries. Don't need AOT compilation; if you want performance, just stick with regular Clojure on the JVM. I'd love to just see a small general-purpose interpreted Clojure (quick start up, small memory footprint, easy access to C libs), even if it lacked concurrency features.
    - pjmlp 10y ago
      For that I fail to see the point of why not use a Scheme or Common Lisp compiler instead.
      - KingMob 10y ago
        Yeah, for native executables, CL and Racket are much further ahead.
      - branchly2 10y ago
        Thank you. Though I really like having Clojure's: * literal syntax for maps, vectors, sets, and regexes * keywords * clear separation of functional constructs (`for`, `map`, etc.) vs side-effecting ones (`do`, `doall`, `when`). * large standard library of built-in functions, with overall fairly nice naming of things. I've looked at Scheme, but it appears to be missing those things. I think some of them may be provided by srfi's, but upon a quick reading I couldn't make much sense of how to include and use them.
        nickik 10y ago
        Racket is probably something you should look at. Im not sure it has all these things, but it is also a modern updated Lisp language based on Scheme.
notduncansmith 10y ago
Clojure's first stable release was in 2009 so it's either very young or very old, depending on how far you zoom out. Rust is exciting for use-cases that are very different from Clojure's, and the only thing I can say for Swift in this context is that I prefer it to Javascript, which I in turn prefer to other C-style languages. I'm currently working on a single-person (but expected to grow) project in Clojure and really appreciate the concurrency and state primitives, the functional standard library, the ecosystem and community of high-quality standard tools and packages, and (while I seldom write them myself) macros, which enable you to you write amazingly readable code. The community has a strong preference to functions over macros, but used judiciously you can get things like Clojure's core.async. So you get the benefits of a Lisp without a lot of the drawbacks commonly pointed out regarding other Lisps. I enjoy it a lot.
madmax96 10y ago
I think that you are right that Rust, Swift, etc. have the hype now. In my mind, this is a product of containerization. Java solved a lot of problems that we faced with deployment. Containers have made deployment even simpler, and suddenly the Java runtime is no longer as valuable as it once was. Furthermore, in a service-oriented architecture we don't really need too much interop with existing code. I think that Clojure is a fantastic language, and I use it for my side projects as much as I can. But the promises made by Clojure dont sound as sexy as they did several years ago, hence the lack of hype.
mej10 10y ago
Have been using Clojure in production for several years. It is great language to work in. I have found it very suitable for solving a wide range of problems. Many companies are using it successfully. Sounds like your view of reality is based on the HN hype cycle. As far as I can tell there are many more companies using Clojure in production than Rust. (nothing against Rust, but just as an example of the bias)
steinuil 10y ago
It just got old. Those who wanted to check it out already have, those who liked it either got a job using it or have spent enough time with it to get bored, and those who didn't have probably forgotten about it already. People just need a change every now and then, you can't get excited about stuff you see or use every day after a while.

by swah 10y ago

afandian 10y ago

I've been using it for 3 years and as I get my teeth further into my current project, I am grateful for Clojure every day.

chousuke 10y ago

I think Clojure is doing just fine. I've seen it used in "real-world" proprietary software (custom-made for a client by a third party). It's just usually packaged as a jar file, so no-one notices unless you look for certain tells.

nepeckman 10y ago

I feel like every new language has a honeymoon period. Clojure is still alive and well (and growing bigger consistently) but it doesn't have that new language hype anymore.

jcadam 10y ago

Currently using Clojure on a side-project. It makes me so much more productive -- a real win when I don't have a ton of hours to devote to a project due to also having a day job :) If only I could find a day job using Clojure...

rlander 10y ago

I felt like that, like Clojure was the future, around 2009/2010. But then Java libraries and their impossible stack traces got in the way. I've been waiting for a native Clojure implementation (or on top of Python or the Erlang VM) ever since.

pjmlp 10y ago
There are few abandoned attempts. Writing from scratch those Java libraries, including a good quality AOT compiler and GC is not something to do as hobby on the weekends.
- branchly2 10y ago
  Don't need all those Java libraries if you've got good FFI with C libraries. Don't need AOT compilation; if you want performance, just stick with regular Clojure on the JVM. I'd love to just see a small general-purpose interpreted Clojure (quick start up, small memory footprint, easy access to C libs), even if it lacked concurrency features.
  - pjmlp 10y ago
    For that I fail to see the point of why not use a Scheme or Common Lisp compiler instead.
    - KingMob 10y ago
      Yeah, for native executables, CL and Racket are much further ahead.
    - branchly2 10y ago
      Thank you. Though I really like having Clojure's: * literal syntax for maps, vectors, sets, and regexes * keywords * clear separation of functional constructs (`for`, `map`, etc.) vs side-effecting ones (`do`, `doall`, `when`). * large standard library of built-in functions, with overall fairly nice naming of things. I've looked at Scheme, but it appears to be missing those things. I think some of them may be provided by srfi's, but upon a quick reading I couldn't make much sense of how to include and use them.
      - nickik 10y ago
        Racket is probably something you should look at. Im not sure it has all these things, but it is also a modern updated Lisp language based on Scheme.

notduncansmith 10y ago

Clojure's first stable release was in 2009 so it's either very young or very old, depending on how far you zoom out. Rust is exciting for use-cases that are very different from Clojure's, and the only thing I can say for Swift in this context is that I prefer it to Javascript, which I in turn prefer to other C-style languages. I'm currently working on a single-person (but expected to grow) project in Clojure and really appreciate the concurrency and state primitives, the functional standard library, the ecosystem and community of high-quality standard tools and packages, and (while I seldom write them myself) macros, which enable you to you write amazingly readable code. The community has a strong preference to functions over macros, but used judiciously you can get things like Clojure's core.async. So you get the benefits of a Lisp without a lot of the drawbacks commonly pointed out regarding other Lisps. I enjoy it a lot.

madmax96 10y ago

I think that you are right that Rust, Swift, etc. have the hype now. In my mind, this is a product of containerization. Java solved a lot of problems that we faced with deployment. Containers have made deployment even simpler, and suddenly the Java runtime is no longer as valuable as it once was. Furthermore, in a service-oriented architecture we don't really need too much interop with existing code. I think that Clojure is a fantastic language, and I use it for my side projects as much as I can. But the promises made by Clojure dont sound as sexy as they did several years ago, hence the lack of hype.

mej10 10y ago

Have been using Clojure in production for several years. It is great language to work in. I have found it very suitable for solving a wide range of problems. Many companies are using it successfully. Sounds like your view of reality is based on the HN hype cycle. As far as I can tell there are many more companies using Clojure in production than Rust. (nothing against Rust, but just as an example of the bias)

steinuil 10y ago

It just got old. Those who wanted to check it out already have, those who liked it either got a job using it or have spent enough time with it to get bored, and those who didn't have probably forgotten about it already. People just need a change every now and then, you can't get excited about stuff you see or use every day after a while.