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If you feel the same way about the Elm project as the author of the article does, you won't be happy with Clojure[script] either. Its community already went thr

by ithrow 6y ago

If you feel the same way about the Elm project as the author of the article does, you won't be happy with Clojure[script] either. Its community already went through this drama and all the top community contributors(or that at least tried to contribute) left.

didibus 6y ago
I can't speak to Elm, but I'd say the Clojure/Script fiasco wasn't really one sided. Some of the "contributors" not getting their way wasn't like they were wanting to push some amazing improvements. Most of the time, the reason for things not going through is actually disagreement on the impact the change would have to the language, and people complaining about how slowly the discussion around it can happen to drive agreement. Basically my point is, some people like me are happy that there's a high bar of entry for contributions and that every change is carefully considered, even if sometimes that means changes happens more slowly. Don't know if that could be true of Elm as well?
- holtalanm 6y ago
  if that is the source of the drama for ClojureScript, there is a huge difference between that and the issue with Elm. With Elm 0.19 they have effectively disabled all libraries that use native JavaScript within, unless they are officially approved by the Elm core team, which I understand is no small feat. Imagine in Clojure if they said "you can't use Java libraries any more. Pure Clojure only from now on" but kept the ability to use Java libraries for the core libraries of the language. -- That is my understanding of the issue with Elm as it currently stands.
  - didibus 6y ago
    Oh, that's a bold move. I doubt this would happen on ClojureScript, in fact, I see the opposite sometimes, some people in the community complain about how Java and JS ruins Clojure/Script and makes everything worse, and why isn't there a native Clojure, where you'd never have to deal with the host. And the core stance tends to be that being hosted is the whole point from the beginning. I can see the frustration with Elm though, especially that it was enacted as part of a version upgrade. If it was from the start, people would know what to expect, but this seems like a huge backward breaking change. I'd be annoyed as well. In Clojure/Script, a lot of the tensions are more about what should be a community provided library, and what should be lifted as officially included in core. I see the core team tends to favour most language extensions to be kept as a library. And often when people want changes to the language to be made, the answer is that Clojure/Script is designed to allow user level changes, so whatever you don't like you can change for yourself. Some people still arn't happy about that, they want their ideas to become the standard. A lot of that stems from it being a Lisp. There's very little of Clojure/Script that actually necessitates changes to the compiler itself. Even the core functionality, most of it is implemented on the basic primitives the compiler gives, so you can happily change and extend almost anything if you disagree with the core team's choices. Back to Elm, I know personally, I've never been into a language restricted to only one use case, the web. It seems Elm has always wanted to be more of a framework for web development. A very opinionated one. This seems to be a move even more on that direction. Like if Ruby didn't exist, but only Ruby On Rails did. Correct me if I'm wrong here. It could lead to something nice in the long run, but like any framework, the trade off is that when it doesn't have the feature you need, you're stuck.
michaelmrose 6y ago
Regarding >all the top community contributors left Please don't pass on misinformation.

by ithrow 6y ago

didibus 6y ago

I can't speak to Elm, but I'd say the Clojure/Script fiasco wasn't really one sided. Some of the "contributors" not getting their way wasn't like they were wanting to push some amazing improvements. Most of the time, the reason for things not going through is actually disagreement on the impact the change would have to the language, and people complaining about how slowly the discussion around it can happen to drive agreement. Basically my point is, some people like me are happy that there's a high bar of entry for contributions and that every change is carefully considered, even if sometimes that means changes happens more slowly. Don't know if that could be true of Elm as well?

holtalanm 6y ago
if that is the source of the drama for ClojureScript, there is a huge difference between that and the issue with Elm. With Elm 0.19 they have effectively disabled all libraries that use native JavaScript within, unless they are officially approved by the Elm core team, which I understand is no small feat. Imagine in Clojure if they said "you can't use Java libraries any more. Pure Clojure only from now on" but kept the ability to use Java libraries for the core libraries of the language. -- That is my understanding of the issue with Elm as it currently stands.
- didibus 6y ago
  Oh, that's a bold move. I doubt this would happen on ClojureScript, in fact, I see the opposite sometimes, some people in the community complain about how Java and JS ruins Clojure/Script and makes everything worse, and why isn't there a native Clojure, where you'd never have to deal with the host. And the core stance tends to be that being hosted is the whole point from the beginning. I can see the frustration with Elm though, especially that it was enacted as part of a version upgrade. If it was from the start, people would know what to expect, but this seems like a huge backward breaking change. I'd be annoyed as well. In Clojure/Script, a lot of the tensions are more about what should be a community provided library, and what should be lifted as officially included in core. I see the core team tends to favour most language extensions to be kept as a library. And often when people want changes to the language to be made, the answer is that Clojure/Script is designed to allow user level changes, so whatever you don't like you can change for yourself. Some people still arn't happy about that, they want their ideas to become the standard. A lot of that stems from it being a Lisp. There's very little of Clojure/Script that actually necessitates changes to the compiler itself. Even the core functionality, most of it is implemented on the basic primitives the compiler gives, so you can happily change and extend almost anything if you disagree with the core team's choices. Back to Elm, I know personally, I've never been into a language restricted to only one use case, the web. It seems Elm has always wanted to be more of a framework for web development. A very opinionated one. This seems to be a move even more on that direction. Like if Ruby didn't exist, but only Ruby On Rails did. Correct me if I'm wrong here. It could lead to something nice in the long run, but like any framework, the trade off is that when it doesn't have the feature you need, you're stuck.

michaelmrose 6y ago

Regarding >all the top community contributors left Please don't pass on misinformation.