7 ms·

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,

by 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.
dustingetz 7y ago
John deGoes said "Clojure developers ... consciously stay inside the Clojure community because they love the language and ecosystem" and I think that's pretty interesting – Clojure has like this event horizon where if you cross it, you become so attached to it that you never leave. It's like a little black hole that is already self-sustaining – it can only grow, it will never die, and it can happily wait for opportunity. We think of hockey stick tech adoption curves as smooth exponentials, but that's not actually true. Hockey sticks demonstrate COMPLIMENT EFFECTS, which is where the latent potential for growth is suddenly activated by an external trigger. An example is broadband/youtube, described by VC Chris Dixon here: http://cdixon.org/2009/09/10/non-linearity-of-technology-adoption/ http://cdixon.org/2009/09/10/non-linearity-of-technology-ado... Another is smartphones and smartphone apps. Ruby/Rails. Scala/bigdata. Our goal at http://www.hyperfiddle.net http://www.hyperfiddle.net is to use the low-code movement to trigger complement effects in Clojure.
- StreamBright 7y ago
  It is becoming Kotlin/Bigdata fairly quickly.
- tombert 7y ago
  For me, I found Clojure after googling around for various of permutations of "CSP in function language" back in 2016 or so. I fooled around with core.async, thought it was pretty neat, but promptly forgot about it. About a year later, I was doing a project where I felt a dynamic language would be useful, still wanted it to be pure-functional-ish, and tried Clojure, and this time started with the fundamentals, and once I got to macros, I was completely hooked on Lisp for forever. I thought it was the coolest thing ever that I could add language features without having to understand compiler theory or anything like that. ===== Nowadays, my work involves around 50% Java (yuck) and 50% Clojure, but a lot of my personal projects are done with Scheme, since I have to admit that I do kind of like the `define-syntax` macro system better than Clojure's. I definitely see the "event horizon" analogy. Once you see just how much more productive you are with the language than most others, it's hard to leave.
WillPostForFood 7y ago
Is it growing? It is a difficult metric to quantify, but looking at thing like Github, or Reddit, it seems flat or declining. Clojure initially benefited as the preferred Java escape path, but it seems like that has been supplanted by Kotlin. https://github.com/oprogramador/github-languages#most-failing https://github.com/oprogramador/github-languages#most-failin... https://www.benfrederickson.com/ranking-programming-languages-by-github-users/ https://www.benfrederickson.com/ranking-programming-language...
- htfu 7y ago
  At least the first link has a pretty crazy cutoff though, 2018. Once a lib is mature it can easily go years without updates, doesn't mean development has been abandoned, much less usage. But trying to compare across languages by package manager traffic or something would obviously be a lot harder. In any case apparent zero velocity, whatever it's actually tracking, definitely shows that general interest (which constantly seems high) isn't really translating to really wide adoption.
  - WillPostForFood 7y ago
    I agree with your first point, and stability of Clojure the language, and libraries is a strength. But it does suggest fewer people are starting new projects with Clojure, which matches how it feels to me, and matches my experience in the Clojure community, where discussions are a little less active.
- didibus 7y ago
  I've noticed the reddit is less active, but I think that's just because everything needing saying was said already. At least it is for me, just busy coding. The Clojure annual survey gets more and more participants every year, so from that angle it seems to be growing.
  - WillPostForFood 7y ago
    Clojure survey in 2015 had 2,445, 2016 had 2,420 responses, 2018 dropped to 2,325, and 2019 had 2,461. So pretty flat.
hota_mazi 7y ago
> As an aside, the 2019 SO survey shows Clojure programmers are the best paid [1] That's more an indication of scarcity than anything else. FORTRAN and COBOL programmers are also pretty well compensated. Also, good luck getting any of these jobs.
- iLemming 7y ago
  >Also, good luck getting any of these jobs. When was the last time you've tried? I know a great deal of developers (including myself) working exclusively with Clojure and have never struggled finding a new gig.
  - pixelperfect 7y ago
    I think the Clojure job market is pretty good for senior developers but bad for junior developers. Anecdotal evidence, but I saw someone a few months ago who had an active Clojure blog, gave talks on Clojure, contributed to multiple interesting projects on GitHub, but was unable to find a job before literally running out of money and going homeless. That could just be a weird situation, but I almost never see any job listings looking for junior developers, and when I do, they tend to be in Europe/Canada rather than the U.S.
    - thrower123 7y ago
      I am not overly familiar with Clojure, but is it possible to be expert at Clojure, and not be able to parlay that into some other JVM language job? It might be a bit depressing, but I would think that one could take a Java job in a pinch if one had one's back against the wall.
      - pixelperfect 7y ago
        I think anyone who's an expert in any general-purpose programming language can find a way to parlay that into a job, since it's much easier for them to learn another language, but knowing Clojure doesn't help much for learning other JVM languages. My guess is an expert C++ programmer could pick up Java faster than a Clojure programmer.
agumonkey 7y ago
It's not the same though, few years ago, every conf was a ~revelation. That said real professional growth is actually even better.
juskrey 7y ago
> As an aside, the 2019 SO survey shows Clojure programmers are the best paid [1]. I am freelancing for Clojure projects for already 6 years and have to say it is true you can expect better compensation in general, but this is only given 1) You are an experienced coder overall, e.g. I am 18 years in dev, and Clojure is seen as a logical high level experience conclusion 2) You can find good existing Clojure project, which is damn hard, and the line of Clojure coders for openings is usually pretty long. And many businesses are expecting to find young coders who can be.. not so well paid. The latter is a very bad approach for Clojure projects (Sorry, young guys, I have seen tons of Clojure code by many people, and it only looks good when the coder is at least 30+) 3) You can find good greenfield tech agnostic project, where your sell point is, again, your overall experience first, Clojure second But at the end, that all keeps you very fit in many dimensions, and I am not going to give up Clojure, instead investing more

by snapey 7y ago

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.

dustingetz 7y ago

John deGoes said "Clojure developers ... consciously stay inside the Clojure community because they love the language and ecosystem" and I think that's pretty interesting – Clojure has like this event horizon where if you cross it, you become so attached to it that you never leave. It's like a little black hole that is already self-sustaining – it can only grow, it will never die, and it can happily wait for opportunity. We think of hockey stick tech adoption curves as smooth exponentials, but that's not actually true. Hockey sticks demonstrate COMPLIMENT EFFECTS, which is where the latent potential for growth is suddenly activated by an external trigger. An example is broadband/youtube, described by VC Chris Dixon here: http://cdixon.org/2009/09/10/non-linearity-of-technology-adoption/ http://cdixon.org/2009/09/10/non-linearity-of-technology-ado... Another is smartphones and smartphone apps. Ruby/Rails. Scala/bigdata. Our goal at http://www.hyperfiddle.net http://www.hyperfiddle.net is to use the low-code movement to trigger complement effects in Clojure.

StreamBright 7y ago
It is becoming Kotlin/Bigdata fairly quickly.
tombert 7y ago
For me, I found Clojure after googling around for various of permutations of "CSP in function language" back in 2016 or so. I fooled around with core.async, thought it was pretty neat, but promptly forgot about it. About a year later, I was doing a project where I felt a dynamic language would be useful, still wanted it to be pure-functional-ish, and tried Clojure, and this time started with the fundamentals, and once I got to macros, I was completely hooked on Lisp for forever. I thought it was the coolest thing ever that I could add language features without having to understand compiler theory or anything like that. ===== Nowadays, my work involves around 50% Java (yuck) and 50% Clojure, but a lot of my personal projects are done with Scheme, since I have to admit that I do kind of like the `define-syntax` macro system better than Clojure's. I definitely see the "event horizon" analogy. Once you see just how much more productive you are with the language than most others, it's hard to leave.

WillPostForFood 7y ago

Is it growing? It is a difficult metric to quantify, but looking at thing like Github, or Reddit, it seems flat or declining. Clojure initially benefited as the preferred Java escape path, but it seems like that has been supplanted by Kotlin. https://github.com/oprogramador/github-languages#most-failing https://github.com/oprogramador/github-languages#most-failin... https://www.benfrederickson.com/ranking-programming-languages-by-github-users/ https://www.benfrederickson.com/ranking-programming-language...

htfu 7y ago
At least the first link has a pretty crazy cutoff though, 2018. Once a lib is mature it can easily go years without updates, doesn't mean development has been abandoned, much less usage. But trying to compare across languages by package manager traffic or something would obviously be a lot harder. In any case apparent zero velocity, whatever it's actually tracking, definitely shows that general interest (which constantly seems high) isn't really translating to really wide adoption.
- WillPostForFood 7y ago
  I agree with your first point, and stability of Clojure the language, and libraries is a strength. But it does suggest fewer people are starting new projects with Clojure, which matches how it feels to me, and matches my experience in the Clojure community, where discussions are a little less active.
didibus 7y ago
I've noticed the reddit is less active, but I think that's just because everything needing saying was said already. At least it is for me, just busy coding. The Clojure annual survey gets more and more participants every year, so from that angle it seems to be growing.
- WillPostForFood 7y ago
  Clojure survey in 2015 had 2,445, 2016 had 2,420 responses, 2018 dropped to 2,325, and 2019 had 2,461. So pretty flat.

hota_mazi 7y ago

> As an aside, the 2019 SO survey shows Clojure programmers are the best paid [1] That's more an indication of scarcity than anything else. FORTRAN and COBOL programmers are also pretty well compensated. Also, good luck getting any of these jobs.

iLemming 7y ago
>Also, good luck getting any of these jobs. When was the last time you've tried? I know a great deal of developers (including myself) working exclusively with Clojure and have never struggled finding a new gig.
- pixelperfect 7y ago
  I think the Clojure job market is pretty good for senior developers but bad for junior developers. Anecdotal evidence, but I saw someone a few months ago who had an active Clojure blog, gave talks on Clojure, contributed to multiple interesting projects on GitHub, but was unable to find a job before literally running out of money and going homeless. That could just be a weird situation, but I almost never see any job listings looking for junior developers, and when I do, they tend to be in Europe/Canada rather than the U.S.
  - thrower123 7y ago
    I am not overly familiar with Clojure, but is it possible to be expert at Clojure, and not be able to parlay that into some other JVM language job? It might be a bit depressing, but I would think that one could take a Java job in a pinch if one had one's back against the wall.
    - pixelperfect 7y ago
      I think anyone who's an expert in any general-purpose programming language can find a way to parlay that into a job, since it's much easier for them to learn another language, but knowing Clojure doesn't help much for learning other JVM languages. My guess is an expert C++ programmer could pick up Java faster than a Clojure programmer.

agumonkey 7y ago

It's not the same though, few years ago, every conf was a ~revelation. That said real professional growth is actually even better.

juskrey 7y ago

> As an aside, the 2019 SO survey shows Clojure programmers are the best paid [1]. I am freelancing for Clojure projects for already 6 years and have to say it is true you can expect better compensation in general, but this is only given 1) You are an experienced coder overall, e.g. I am 18 years in dev, and Clojure is seen as a logical high level experience conclusion 2) You can find good existing Clojure project, which is damn hard, and the line of Clojure coders for openings is usually pretty long. And many businesses are expecting to find young coders who can be.. not so well paid. The latter is a very bad approach for Clojure projects (Sorry, young guys, I have seen tons of Clojure code by many people, and it only looks good when the coder is at least 30+) 3) You can find good greenfield tech agnostic project, where your sell point is, again, your overall experience first, Clojure second But at the end, that all keeps you very fit in many dimensions, and I am not going to give up Clojure, instead investing more