8 ms·

I thought I wouldn't live to see the day for Clojure related link to be the top link on HN. I had to reload 5 times. Clojure's cool, I am glad I got to work wi

I thought I wouldn't live to see the day for Clojure related link to be the top link on HN. I had to reload 5 times. Clojure's cool, I am glad I got to work with it professionally. I did go back to Javascript, but it made me a better developer. It strikes a nice balance between being a pure functional language and being practical.

hombre_fatal 7y ago
5-8 years ago, Clojure was constantly on HN! Then it fell out of HN attention.
- dominotw 7y ago
  Yes not sure what happened to clojure. The rise and fall of clojure is really intriguing. Looks like everyone just went back to java.
  - ballpark 7y ago
    Oh wow... not a chance
    - WillPostForFood 7y ago
      I don't think people are going back to Java, but there are other options. I prefer Clojure, but Kotlin is a much easier switch for most Java devs.
  - snapey 7y ago
    It hasn't fallen. The Clojure community has been growing steadily and continues to grow (it's a great community, I'll add). Things have just settled down since, that's why there are fewer announcement. As an aside, the 2019 SO survey shows Clojure programmers are the best paid [1]. Most Clojure programmers I know (myself included) would not choose to go back to Java. [1] https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2019#technology-_-what-languages-are-associated-with-the-highest-salaries-worldwide https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2019#technology-_-...
    - Scarbutt 7y ago
      As an aside, the 2019 SO survey shows Clojure programmers are the best paid [1]. Not to sound snarky, but that could be interpreted as old clojure projects can't find Clojure programmers.
      - iLemming 7y ago
        No, it's not because of that. The reason I think - F# and Clojure are two main FP languages being used in Finance. Fintech companies are known for paying above average salary. Both F# and Clojure are the most paid languages (according to SO surveys of the last few years)
    - dominotw 7y ago
      > Most Clojure programmers I know (myself included) would not choose to go back to Java. Thats true. I write clojure for living too. But choice of programming languages in enterprises is not made by programmers.
      - tombert 7y ago
        It is indirectly; if a company has trouble hiring, they might switch up the stack a bit to try and attract new talent. For example, my previous employer (Jet.com) used F# partly because one of the most senior engineers liked it, but also partly because they thought it might attract some tech talent out of the shadows.
        ken 7y ago
        I've never heard of any company switching languages because they were having trouble hiring.
        the2bears 7y ago
        Happened at a company I worked for. Anecdotal, but it happens.
    - 7y ago
  - Scarbutt 7y ago
    Looks like everyone just went back to java. From my surroundings more to JS/TS/Python/Kotlin, obviously big communities have a network effect for pragmatic reasons.
  - StreamBright 7y ago
    What are you talking about? The long term Clojure users are probably still using Clojure, based on the activity observed on Github repos. I think Java people who do not like Clojure much more inclined to use Scala and more recently Kotlin.
  - iLemming 7y ago
    "Fall" of Clojure? Clojure is still growing and not showing any signs of stopping anytime soon. Conferences popping up all around the world. Almost every European country has its own Clojure conference, some have multiple. Clojure today has more conferences, meetups, podcasts, jobs and books than any of those "non-mainstream" PLs like OCaml/ReasonML, Haskell, Elm, Elixir, Erlang, Julia, F#, Swift. Soon number of Clojure conferences will exceed number of Scala-related confs. Clojure community is still innovating. Mind that the steward company has probably less than 100 engineers in total and the community has less active members than the number of engineers working for Google, yet they are constantly doing pretty cool things. They are figuring out interop with Python and R from Clojure, they are constantly improving Clojurescript performance, they're experimenting with type systems, improving Editor/IDE support, doing machine learning stuff, serverless, graphql, smart-contracts, distributed systems, etc. etc. People don't see it, because they are too busy shoveling shit from one corner of the ecosystem to another in Python, Typescript, Java, Ruby, Golang etc. stacks. But Clojurists are quietly building things and solving real problems.
paxdoxemus 7y ago
Was going back to JavaScript your choice or an external factor such as job-related reasons? As someone starting out with Clojure and ClojureScript I'd be interested to hear about your experience.
- TickMark 7y ago
  External factors. Clojure didn't offer a great variety of jobs, especially remote. There was a decent number of jobs for onsite positions, but that's the trade I wasn't willing to make. The language itself is great. The ecosystem is fine, you can find most libraries and if you can't you can at time use the JAVA versions. This was at times a pain because Java client libraries for certain services were out of date. Solving real-life business problems was tricky but ultimately fun and satisfying. As the resulting code is usually very elegant and succinct. I really loved the interactive programming aspect of it. It was really easy to go from a repl experiment to the actual implementation.
  - forgotmylastacc 7y ago
    I work here: https://pitch.com/about#hiring https://pitch.com/about#hiring We are looking for ClojureScript/Clojure developers. And we support remote working.
    - loevborg 7y ago
      Another Pitcher here. We're betting big on Clojure(Script) and are hiring! If you're curious, feel free to reach out (my email address is in my profile).
    - TickMark 7y ago
      This would be great, if I weren't starting a new contract on Monday. :) I mean this is still great for someone else. I am not surprised you are Berlin-based, I was at EuroClojure in 2017 in Berlin and was pleasantly surprised by how many Clojure companies existed there, most didn't offer remote work though.
  - fnordsensei 7y ago
htfu 7y ago
Hmm, feels to me like there's something Clojure related on the front page every other day. Transient enough though.

hombre_fatal 7y ago

5-8 years ago, Clojure was constantly on HN! Then it fell out of HN attention.

dominotw 7y ago
Yes not sure what happened to clojure. The rise and fall of clojure is really intriguing. Looks like everyone just went back to java.
- ballpark 7y ago
  Oh wow... not a chance
  - WillPostForFood 7y ago
    I don't think people are going back to Java, but there are other options. I prefer Clojure, but Kotlin is a much easier switch for most Java devs.
- snapey 7y ago
  It hasn't fallen. The Clojure community has been growing steadily and continues to grow (it's a great community, I'll add). Things have just settled down since, that's why there are fewer announcement. As an aside, the 2019 SO survey shows Clojure programmers are the best paid [1]. Most Clojure programmers I know (myself included) would not choose to go back to Java. [1] https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2019#technology-_-what-languages-are-associated-with-the-highest-salaries-worldwide https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2019#technology-_-...
  - Scarbutt 7y ago
    As an aside, the 2019 SO survey shows Clojure programmers are the best paid [1]. Not to sound snarky, but that could be interpreted as old clojure projects can't find Clojure programmers.
    - iLemming 7y ago
      No, it's not because of that. The reason I think - F# and Clojure are two main FP languages being used in Finance. Fintech companies are known for paying above average salary. Both F# and Clojure are the most paid languages (according to SO surveys of the last few years)
  - dominotw 7y ago
    > Most Clojure programmers I know (myself included) would not choose to go back to Java. Thats true. I write clojure for living too. But choice of programming languages in enterprises is not made by programmers.
    - tombert 7y ago
      It is indirectly; if a company has trouble hiring, they might switch up the stack a bit to try and attract new talent. For example, my previous employer (Jet.com) used F# partly because one of the most senior engineers liked it, but also partly because they thought it might attract some tech talent out of the shadows.
      - ken 7y ago
        I've never heard of any company switching languages because they were having trouble hiring.
        the2bears 7y ago
        Happened at a company I worked for. Anecdotal, but it happens.
  - 7y ago
- Scarbutt 7y ago
  Looks like everyone just went back to java. From my surroundings more to JS/TS/Python/Kotlin, obviously big communities have a network effect for pragmatic reasons.
- StreamBright 7y ago
  What are you talking about? The long term Clojure users are probably still using Clojure, based on the activity observed on Github repos. I think Java people who do not like Clojure much more inclined to use Scala and more recently Kotlin.
- iLemming 7y ago
  "Fall" of Clojure? Clojure is still growing and not showing any signs of stopping anytime soon. Conferences popping up all around the world. Almost every European country has its own Clojure conference, some have multiple. Clojure today has more conferences, meetups, podcasts, jobs and books than any of those "non-mainstream" PLs like OCaml/ReasonML, Haskell, Elm, Elixir, Erlang, Julia, F#, Swift. Soon number of Clojure conferences will exceed number of Scala-related confs. Clojure community is still innovating. Mind that the steward company has probably less than 100 engineers in total and the community has less active members than the number of engineers working for Google, yet they are constantly doing pretty cool things. They are figuring out interop with Python and R from Clojure, they are constantly improving Clojurescript performance, they're experimenting with type systems, improving Editor/IDE support, doing machine learning stuff, serverless, graphql, smart-contracts, distributed systems, etc. etc. People don't see it, because they are too busy shoveling shit from one corner of the ecosystem to another in Python, Typescript, Java, Ruby, Golang etc. stacks. But Clojurists are quietly building things and solving real problems.

paxdoxemus 7y ago

Was going back to JavaScript your choice or an external factor such as job-related reasons? As someone starting out with Clojure and ClojureScript I'd be interested to hear about your experience.

TickMark 7y ago
External factors. Clojure didn't offer a great variety of jobs, especially remote. There was a decent number of jobs for onsite positions, but that's the trade I wasn't willing to make. The language itself is great. The ecosystem is fine, you can find most libraries and if you can't you can at time use the JAVA versions. This was at times a pain because Java client libraries for certain services were out of date. Solving real-life business problems was tricky but ultimately fun and satisfying. As the resulting code is usually very elegant and succinct. I really loved the interactive programming aspect of it. It was really easy to go from a repl experiment to the actual implementation.
- forgotmylastacc 7y ago
  I work here: https://pitch.com/about#hiring https://pitch.com/about#hiring We are looking for ClojureScript/Clojure developers. And we support remote working.
  - loevborg 7y ago
    Another Pitcher here. We're betting big on Clojure(Script) and are hiring! If you're curious, feel free to reach out (my email address is in my profile).
  - TickMark 7y ago
    This would be great, if I weren't starting a new contract on Monday. :) I mean this is still great for someone else. I am not surprised you are Berlin-based, I was at EuroClojure in 2017 in Berlin and was pleasantly surprised by how many Clojure companies existed there, most didn't offer remote work though.
- fnordsensei 7y ago

htfu 7y ago

Hmm, feels to me like there's something Clojure related on the front page every other day. Transient enough though.