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I really like Rich's views and find Clojure very interesting as well. That said, as a Java shop with Javascript frontend, nowadays the bulk of complexity in our

I really like Rich's views and find Clojure very interesting as well. That said, as a Java shop with Javascript frontend, nowadays the bulk of complexity in our code base seems to accumulate in the frontend due to mixed skill levels of the team and lack of opinionated structure in the language. This leads to some rather messy code that even skilled devs are afraid to touch because of lack of feedback from the IDE that some refactor is working without loose ends. The same problem with the same people just doesn't happen in the backend and I link that to static typing and IDE maturity. We have started to adopt Typescript and are seeing improvements already. We just have to live with the fact not all developers working in the code are mature enough to avoid language and code organization pitfalls. Refactoring should be mostly a safe endeavor, even if only structurally. This is the main reason I wouldn't suggest Clojure for our team.

hellofunk 9y ago
I agree that there is definitely added discipline needed to succeed well in large dynamically-typed projects. I also think that learning to build large projects in such languages is like running your marathon training high in the mountains, so when you get back to sea-level your body feels the joy. You are forced to write very clean code in Clojure if you want to easily maintain it later. That's a great skill that translates to any other language where less discipline might still get you far.
lilactown 9y ago
I think it's something else, as well. Rich even mentions it in his talk: languages like Java (which I'm reading to mean "statically typed") are great at mechanical tasks. Front end programming is mostly filled with mechanical tasks: scaffold this structure/layout. Wire up these events. Make this thing blue/bold/etc. Change the state when these events happen. It's fairly predictable in structure in line-of-business apps, at least once you're following an intelligent structure, e.g. the Elm architecture. UI/Front end dev, IMO, can gain quite a bit from static typing. I'm a huge fan of clojurescript, it's what I reach for whenever I want to work on something, but I'm super excited about ReasonML for the future of my team; we struggle with our JavaScript code base right now due to the lack of imposed structure and feedback for our weaker developers. I love Clojure and I think it makes sense in a lot of domains; most of my back end development is "take this data, transform it according to some nebulous business rules, and poop it out to some other place," which Clojure is amazing for. It's great for applications that don't require a lot of "wiring", and require a lot of "flow". UI programming is, for the most part, wiring things up. It's not that Clojure/Script is not up to the task (I think e.g. re-frame, and the stuff being done with Fulcro, is amazing) but I definitely see the benefits of static typing more in that domain. And like Rich said, if you're doing UI it will usually completely dominate the problem space you're working in. So pick the right tool for the job. I'm not convinced TypeScript is the way exactly, but like I said, ReasonML and Elm are super promising.

hellofunk 9y ago

I agree that there is definitely added discipline needed to succeed well in large dynamically-typed projects. I also think that learning to build large projects in such languages is like running your marathon training high in the mountains, so when you get back to sea-level your body feels the joy. You are forced to write very clean code in Clojure if you want to easily maintain it later. That's a great skill that translates to any other language where less discipline might still get you far.

lilactown 9y ago

I think it's something else, as well. Rich even mentions it in his talk: languages like Java (which I'm reading to mean "statically typed") are great at mechanical tasks. Front end programming is mostly filled with mechanical tasks: scaffold this structure/layout. Wire up these events. Make this thing blue/bold/etc. Change the state when these events happen. It's fairly predictable in structure in line-of-business apps, at least once you're following an intelligent structure, e.g. the Elm architecture. UI/Front end dev, IMO, can gain quite a bit from static typing. I'm a huge fan of clojurescript, it's what I reach for whenever I want to work on something, but I'm super excited about ReasonML for the future of my team; we struggle with our JavaScript code base right now due to the lack of imposed structure and feedback for our weaker developers. I love Clojure and I think it makes sense in a lot of domains; most of my back end development is "take this data, transform it according to some nebulous business rules, and poop it out to some other place," which Clojure is amazing for. It's great for applications that don't require a lot of "wiring", and require a lot of "flow". UI programming is, for the most part, wiring things up. It's not that Clojure/Script is not up to the task (I think e.g. re-frame, and the stuff being done with Fulcro, is amazing) but I definitely see the benefits of static typing more in that domain. And like Rich said, if you're doing UI it will usually completely dominate the problem space you're working in. So pick the right tool for the job. I'm not convinced TypeScript is the way exactly, but like I said, ReasonML and Elm are super promising.