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Clojure is far from perfect. But a lot of people are using it and will continue to use it effectively. It sounds like you're just salty for some reason. I'm so

by lukev 8y ago

Clojure is far from perfect. But a lot of people are using it and will continue to use it effectively. It sounds like you're just salty for some reason. I'm sorry you had a bad experience, but that has no bearing on the usefulness of the language.

tombert 8y ago
I don't want to speak for the original author here, but I believe he's basically saying that Clojure has a bit of a tradition of "change no behavior!". Rich Hickey has said as much in one of his talks [1], and while I think Rich Hickey is objectively smarter than me, I don't actually agree with him on this point. The difference between Clojure and nearly any other language, however, is that you don't need the core library; you can add any language feature you want due to the awesome macro system in Lisps. Even if they deleted the core library tomorrow, we could still build in literally any language construct we want as a library. This is why Lisp is made of magic :)
- sbov 8y ago
  But any language with any sort of traction has a bit of a tradition of changing no behavior, so Clojure isn't special here. So I'm not sure what exactly you disagree with here. It makes me think I don't quite understand what you actually intend to communicate.
  - tombert 8y ago
    Back up, keep in mind that I'm not the same person as before, I don't disagree with you. I think Clojure's built-in library is great, and more than production-ready. Not entirely sure what the parent was talking about.
- thom 8y ago
  No, this wasn't my point. I don't lament them not making breaking changes, obviously. My point was that most of the work the core team does is on projects that they will never revisit in the future. The one exception to this is spec, which drags on. Once it's out of alpha I expect them never to touch it again. If you believe everything in core is perfect and fully formed, and that all other needs are served by libraries that are actively maintained, that's great. Not my experience by a long shot, but I'm happy to be grumpy in a world full of happy Clojure programmers.
thom 8y ago
Nothing I said has anything to do with the usefulness of the language - I work with it every day and have for a decade, and I hope that I'm not completely crazy. I was just stating that anything that appears in core basically gets to 1.0ish and is never touched again. This seems demonstrably true to me, and not even necessarily a bad thing, but perhaps others disagree.

by lukev 8y ago

tombert 8y ago

I don't want to speak for the original author here, but I believe he's basically saying that Clojure has a bit of a tradition of "change no behavior!". Rich Hickey has said as much in one of his talks [1], and while I think Rich Hickey is objectively smarter than me, I don't actually agree with him on this point. The difference between Clojure and nearly any other language, however, is that you don't need the core library; you can add any language feature you want due to the awesome macro system in Lisps. Even if they deleted the core library tomorrow, we could still build in literally any language construct we want as a library. This is why Lisp is made of magic :)

sbov 8y ago
But any language with any sort of traction has a bit of a tradition of changing no behavior, so Clojure isn't special here. So I'm not sure what exactly you disagree with here. It makes me think I don't quite understand what you actually intend to communicate.
- tombert 8y ago
  Back up, keep in mind that I'm not the same person as before, I don't disagree with you. I think Clojure's built-in library is great, and more than production-ready. Not entirely sure what the parent was talking about.
thom 8y ago
No, this wasn't my point. I don't lament them not making breaking changes, obviously. My point was that most of the work the core team does is on projects that they will never revisit in the future. The one exception to this is spec, which drags on. Once it's out of alpha I expect them never to touch it again. If you believe everything in core is perfect and fully formed, and that all other needs are served by libraries that are actively maintained, that's great. Not my experience by a long shot, but I'm happy to be grumpy in a world full of happy Clojure programmers.

thom 8y ago

Nothing I said has anything to do with the usefulness of the language - I work with it every day and have for a decade, and I hope that I'm not completely crazy. I was just stating that anything that appears in core basically gets to 1.0ish and is never touched again. This seems demonstrably true to me, and not even necessarily a bad thing, but perhaps others disagree.