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I think it's the other way around: Clojure gained more exposure than past Lisps because it runs on the JVM. But it's still definitely niche and hardly used any

I think it's the other way around: Clojure gained more exposure than past Lisps because it runs on the JVM. But it's still definitely niche and hardly used anywhere.

ken 8y ago
ABCL runs on the JVM and is about the same age as Clojure, and isn’t anywhere near as popular.
- i_feel_great 8y ago
  Kawa (https://www.gnu.org/software/kawa/ https://www.gnu.org/software/kawa/) is even better, and I only ever came across one other person who has ever heard of it.
  - ken 8y ago
    Right, I'd forgotten about that! I used it as an extension language for a Java program once. I didn't think it even had a compiler, but that was 20 years ago, and it appears to have one now.
    - brlewis 8y ago
      It has always been a compiler. The REPL works by compiling expressions when you type them.
  - th0ma5 8y ago
    Kawa was my first Lisp / Scheme and I dug it quite a bit. I wrote some wrappers for Processing called ProKawa which probably doesn't work with the latest Processing releases, but it was all very fun. Quil on Clojure is pretty good, and in general I'd say I've gotten more milage out of Clojure for sure.
- mschaef 8y ago
  A lot of credit for that goes to Rich Hickey - from what I can tell, he did a very successful job early on of 1) designing a Lisp with a unique combination of ideas and 2) publicizing it in a way that resonated with a people.
  - mark_l_watson 8y ago
    I agree, Rich has done a great job promoting and maintaining Clojure. BTW, he used to use Common Lisp. I first got to know him (via email) because of his wonderful Java <--> Common Lisp bridge. re: ABCL: this is really a great project. I don't use ABCL very often but when I need it I am grateful to the developers.
  - iLemming 7y ago
    Not just that. Clojure actually has a lot of features. It's not just "yet another Lisp on JVM". here's an excerpt from Joker page (Clojure linter written in Go): Protocols, records, structmaps, chunked seqs, transients, tagged literals, unchecked arithmetics, primitive arrays, custom data readers, transducers, validators and watch functions for vars and atoms, hierarchies, sorted maps and sets. Clojurescript was much easier to make because it was written in Clojure, not Java. IMO if we ever see Clojure that is hosted on other runtimes it will be written in Clojure and probably still will have to depend on JVM.
brightball 8y ago
I think this is accurate (in terms of exposure, not that it's hardly used). As soon as it was possible for other languages to run on the JVM, the huge amount of developers working around JVM infrastructure that didn't like the sometimes painful experience of working with Java, started looking at alternatives. Groovy, Scala and Clojure were the early contenders that people were exploring and Clojure seems to have won a lot of mindshare. The thing about Java isn't the language or the JVM it's the App Servers. Enterprises have invested heavily in the App Server infrastructure for deploying JVM based code from monitoring, training, etc. Throwing all that away to use a non-JVM language is a REALLY hard sell. Those app servers are very well done. Running on the JVM made using Clojure, Scala and Groovy possible in places where other languages wouldn't have been. In the early 2000s, it was Java and everything else. The .NET ecosystem was awful at that time. The programming world was essentially, Java, Perl and PHP 4 in terms of enterprise usage. People said the words "Enterprise Java Beans" without a chuckle. People were HUNGRY for better options. Now you've got a solid C# ecosystem, Elixir, Go, a dominant Python ecosystem, significantly more polished PHP, K8's & Docker that make automating the infrastructure around all different languages consistent...it's just a different world.
- joshlemer 8y ago
  >Groovy, Scala and Clojure were the early contenders that people were exploring and Clojure seems to have won. I love Clojure and hope it gains more mindshare, but I don't think this is accurate. Scala currently enjoys quite a lot more industry use than Clojure does, for instance there are currently roughly 15x as many postings mentioning Scala as there are Clojure (source: Linkedin.ca).
  - brightball 8y ago
    You're right. I updated my comment.
  - cutler 8y ago
    Same in London. Search indeed.co.uk for "title:Clojure" and there are on average no more than 6 unique results. Outside London the rest of the UK shows next to nothing. About 6 years ago Clojure dojos and meetups were well-attended but even then the numbers were a fraction of the equivalent Scala events. Nowadays you're lucky to get a handful attendees at London Clojure events which is a real shame as it suggests Clojure is disappearing into a very small niche.
puredanger 8y ago
Yeah, it's only used at weird startups like Walmart, Apple, Amazon, Cisco, etc.
- Touche 8y ago
  To be fair, at companies that size basically every programming language is used somewhere, by some team.
  - yogthos 8y ago
    However, they don't just use any language for large scale mission critical projects https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=av9Xi6CNqq4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=av9Xi6CNqq4
- apetrovic 8y ago
  Used like "someone used their pet language for small side project" or used like "these companies would crush if Clojure compiler suddenly stopped working tomorrow"?
  - ilikehurdles 8y ago
    I recall that Walmart Labs uses their clojure graphql server library in production, for some definition of "in production".

I think it's the other way around: Clojure gained more exposure than past Lisps because it runs on the JVM. But it's still definitely niche and hardly used anywhere.

ken 8y ago

ABCL runs on the JVM and is about the same age as Clojure, and isn’t anywhere near as popular.

i_feel_great 8y ago
Kawa (https://www.gnu.org/software/kawa/ https://www.gnu.org/software/kawa/) is even better, and I only ever came across one other person who has ever heard of it.
- ken 8y ago
  Right, I'd forgotten about that! I used it as an extension language for a Java program once. I didn't think it even had a compiler, but that was 20 years ago, and it appears to have one now.
  - brlewis 8y ago
    It has always been a compiler. The REPL works by compiling expressions when you type them.
- th0ma5 8y ago
  Kawa was my first Lisp / Scheme and I dug it quite a bit. I wrote some wrappers for Processing called ProKawa which probably doesn't work with the latest Processing releases, but it was all very fun. Quil on Clojure is pretty good, and in general I'd say I've gotten more milage out of Clojure for sure.
mschaef 8y ago
A lot of credit for that goes to Rich Hickey - from what I can tell, he did a very successful job early on of 1) designing a Lisp with a unique combination of ideas and 2) publicizing it in a way that resonated with a people.
- mark_l_watson 8y ago
  I agree, Rich has done a great job promoting and maintaining Clojure. BTW, he used to use Common Lisp. I first got to know him (via email) because of his wonderful Java <--> Common Lisp bridge. re: ABCL: this is really a great project. I don't use ABCL very often but when I need it I am grateful to the developers.
- iLemming 7y ago
  Not just that. Clojure actually has a lot of features. It's not just "yet another Lisp on JVM". here's an excerpt from Joker page (Clojure linter written in Go): Protocols, records, structmaps, chunked seqs, transients, tagged literals, unchecked arithmetics, primitive arrays, custom data readers, transducers, validators and watch functions for vars and atoms, hierarchies, sorted maps and sets. Clojurescript was much easier to make because it was written in Clojure, not Java. IMO if we ever see Clojure that is hosted on other runtimes it will be written in Clojure and probably still will have to depend on JVM.

brightball 8y ago

I think this is accurate (in terms of exposure, not that it's hardly used). As soon as it was possible for other languages to run on the JVM, the huge amount of developers working around JVM infrastructure that didn't like the sometimes painful experience of working with Java, started looking at alternatives. Groovy, Scala and Clojure were the early contenders that people were exploring and Clojure seems to have won a lot of mindshare. The thing about Java isn't the language or the JVM it's the App Servers. Enterprises have invested heavily in the App Server infrastructure for deploying JVM based code from monitoring, training, etc. Throwing all that away to use a non-JVM language is a REALLY hard sell. Those app servers are very well done. Running on the JVM made using Clojure, Scala and Groovy possible in places where other languages wouldn't have been. In the early 2000s, it was Java and everything else. The .NET ecosystem was awful at that time. The programming world was essentially, Java, Perl and PHP 4 in terms of enterprise usage. People said the words "Enterprise Java Beans" without a chuckle. People were HUNGRY for better options. Now you've got a solid C# ecosystem, Elixir, Go, a dominant Python ecosystem, significantly more polished PHP, K8's & Docker that make automating the infrastructure around all different languages consistent...it's just a different world.

joshlemer 8y ago
>Groovy, Scala and Clojure were the early contenders that people were exploring and Clojure seems to have won. I love Clojure and hope it gains more mindshare, but I don't think this is accurate. Scala currently enjoys quite a lot more industry use than Clojure does, for instance there are currently roughly 15x as many postings mentioning Scala as there are Clojure (source: Linkedin.ca).
- brightball 8y ago
  You're right. I updated my comment.
- cutler 8y ago
  Same in London. Search indeed.co.uk for "title:Clojure" and there are on average no more than 6 unique results. Outside London the rest of the UK shows next to nothing. About 6 years ago Clojure dojos and meetups were well-attended but even then the numbers were a fraction of the equivalent Scala events. Nowadays you're lucky to get a handful attendees at London Clojure events which is a real shame as it suggests Clojure is disappearing into a very small niche.

puredanger 8y ago

Yeah, it's only used at weird startups like Walmart, Apple, Amazon, Cisco, etc.

Touche 8y ago
To be fair, at companies that size basically every programming language is used somewhere, by some team.
- yogthos 8y ago
  However, they don't just use any language for large scale mission critical projects https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=av9Xi6CNqq4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=av9Xi6CNqq4
apetrovic 8y ago
Used like "someone used their pet language for small side project" or used like "these companies would crush if Clojure compiler suddenly stopped working tomorrow"?
- ilikehurdles 8y ago
  I recall that Walmart Labs uses their clojure graphql server library in production, for some definition of "in production".