5 ms·

Why Clojure?

34 points by kadishay 8y ago

venantius 8y ago
At the risk of stating the obvious, this article doesn't really talk about why they picked Clojure beyond one or two superficial reasons.
- threatofrain 8y ago
  Yes, it seems more like an advertisement for recruiting.
  - kadishay 8y ago
    it really isn't a recruiting advertisement, we only have R&D in Israel & Ukraine - but we will take it into account and add a drill down on the next article
    - rerx 8y ago
      It ends with "Want to write everything in Clojure? Join us"...
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
keymone 8y ago
hmm.. does Betteridge's law apply here?
- ruffel_ 8y ago
  No.
tablet 8y ago
Everybody sees "Clojure" → click upvote → Read the article → regret it → look for downvote button → :( /me
- spacehome 8y ago
  unvote
  - tablet 8y ago
    made my day. Never saw it!
pgt 8y ago
Low signal-to-noise posts about Clojure are damaging to adoption because it doesn't say anything about why Clojure is a good option on the JVM. Instead, I will try to give some reasons why Clojure is a good fit for high-performance stream fusion, which I presume AppsFlyer has to do a lot of: - [Onyx](https://github.com/onyx-platform/onyx https://github.com/onyx-platform/onyx) for distributed, masterless, fault-tolerant data processing - [core.async](https://github.com/clojure/core.async https://github.com/clojure/core.async) for CSP-style events through a channel abstraction. I miss core.async so much in every other language, I generally end up implementing a subset of the semantics. - [Transducers](https://clojure.org/reference/transducers https://clojure.org/reference/transducers) for composable transformations, e.g. (filter odd?) ;; returns a transducer that filters odd (map inc) ;; returns a mapping transducer for incrementing (take 5) ;; returns a transducer that will take the first 5 values of a sequence (def xf (comp (filter odd?) (map inc) (take 5))) (into [] xf (range 100)) ;; => [2 4 6 8 10] Note that no intermediate data structures are created during these transformations, so it's super fast. - [Specter](https://github.com/nathanmarz/specter https://github.com/nathanmarz/specter) decomplects navigation and transformation, pulling apart the "where" from the "how". In most imperative languages whenever the shape or performance characteristics your data structures change, you also have to update all the code that transforms it. Not with Specter. - Zach Tellman's [Manifold](https://github.com/ztellman/manifold https://github.com/ztellman/manifold) provides event-streaming abstractions on top of async workflows like lazy sequences, core.async and Java's BlockingQueues.
- madmulita 8y ago
  Wait! What? That's what 'transducers' means? Being new to Clojure I've been avoiding some concepts until later, but if they hadn't renamed old concepts, ie: higher order functions to transducers, maybe newbies wouldn't get scared.
  - andrenth 8y ago
    I’m not a Clojure programmer but from the example given, “transducers” would be equivalent to lazy evaluation / stream fusion. Simple HOFs wouldn’t prevent the elements to be traversed in each subsequent function call.
dr_teh 8y ago
This article doesn't really say anything. Walmart is a much better example of "Why Clojure". Or anything that comes out of Rich Hickey's mouth, basically

34 points by kadishay 8y ago

At the risk of stating the obvious, this article doesn't really talk about why they picked Clojure beyond one or two superficial reasons.

threatofrain 8y ago
Yes, it seems more like an advertisement for recruiting.
- kadishay 8y ago
  it really isn't a recruiting advertisement, we only have R&D in Israel & Ukraine - but we will take it into account and add a drill down on the next article
  - rerx 8y ago
    It ends with "Want to write everything in Clojure? Join us"...
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

keymone 8y ago

hmm.. does Betteridge's law apply here?

ruffel_ 8y ago
No.

tablet 8y ago

Everybody sees "Clojure" → click upvote → Read the article → regret it → look for downvote button → :( /me

spacehome 8y ago
unvote
- tablet 8y ago
  made my day. Never saw it!

pgt 8y ago

Low signal-to-noise posts about Clojure are damaging to adoption because it doesn't say anything about why Clojure is a good option on the JVM. Instead, I will try to give some reasons why Clojure is a good fit for high-performance stream fusion, which I presume AppsFlyer has to do a lot of: - [Onyx](https://github.com/onyx-platform/onyx https://github.com/onyx-platform/onyx) for distributed, masterless, fault-tolerant data processing - [core.async](https://github.com/clojure/core.async https://github.com/clojure/core.async) for CSP-style events through a channel abstraction. I miss core.async so much in every other language, I generally end up implementing a subset of the semantics. - [Transducers](https://clojure.org/reference/transducers https://clojure.org/reference/transducers) for composable transformations, e.g. (filter odd?) ;; returns a transducer that filters odd (map inc) ;; returns a mapping transducer for incrementing (take 5) ;; returns a transducer that will take the first 5 values of a sequence (def xf (comp (filter odd?) (map inc) (take 5))) (into [] xf (range 100)) ;; => [2 4 6 8 10] Note that no intermediate data structures are created during these transformations, so it's super fast. - [Specter](https://github.com/nathanmarz/specter https://github.com/nathanmarz/specter) decomplects navigation and transformation, pulling apart the "where" from the "how". In most imperative languages whenever the shape or performance characteristics your data structures change, you also have to update all the code that transforms it. Not with Specter. - Zach Tellman's [Manifold](https://github.com/ztellman/manifold https://github.com/ztellman/manifold) provides event-streaming abstractions on top of async workflows like lazy sequences, core.async and Java's BlockingQueues.

madmulita 8y ago
Wait! What? That's what 'transducers' means? Being new to Clojure I've been avoiding some concepts until later, but if they hadn't renamed old concepts, ie: higher order functions to transducers, maybe newbies wouldn't get scared.
- andrenth 8y ago
  I’m not a Clojure programmer but from the example given, “transducers” would be equivalent to lazy evaluation / stream fusion. Simple HOFs wouldn’t prevent the elements to be traversed in each subsequent function call.

dr_teh 8y ago

This article doesn't really say anything. Walmart is a much better example of "Why Clojure". Or anything that comes out of Rich Hickey's mouth, basically