6 ms·

At least a dozen big companies are running on large Clojure codebases: Apple, Cisco, Walmart Labs, Funding Circle, Nubank, Metabase, CircleCI, Grammarly, to nam

At least a dozen big companies are running on large Clojure codebases: Apple, Cisco, Walmart Labs, Funding Circle, Nubank, Metabase, CircleCI, Grammarly, to name a few. Many smaller companies built their entire businesses using Clojure stack. The days when Clojure was just "a toy to impress your friends" are long gone. It's a mature ecosystem for the serious craft. Today it's the most widely used FP language; it has gained popularity and doing better than OCaml, Erlang/Elixir, Elm, Haskell, F#, and even Scala. Clojure is slowly but steadily growing. Without any support from the big players. I think the core Clojure team has fewer people than teams at Facebook and Google for front-end libraries like React and Angular. Podcasts are being recorded, books published, conferences organized. Skeptics often criticize "not growing, small but very vocal community", they call it "a cult of Rich Hickey" and pronounce the language to be dying. The truth is - many companies realizing the incredible pragmatism of ideas behind Clojure.

dominotw 6y ago
> The truth is - many companies realizing the incredible pragmatism of ideas behind Clojure. My employer is moving away from cljoure after 100% of the stack on clojure/clojurescript for over 10 yrs. All the companies that you mentioned ( with the exception of nubank) adopted Clojure years ago. Curious to know if there are new companies picking clojure, your comment seems to imply so.
- pivo 6y ago
  > My employer is moving away from cljoure I'd be interested in why that is if you have a moment to write a bit about it.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- iLemming 6y ago
  I'm not an investor or someone whose job is to track companies and their tech stacks (I can't list them here), but there are many, many medium and small startups that adopted Clojure not too long ago (especially in European countries). Pitch.com was founded in 2018, Clubhouse.io, Metabase in 2014; Ladder in 2015; Flexiana, Watchful.io in 2016. Mind that these are official dates when the companies were established, some took at least a year, two, or even more to get going. Your case is anecdotal, and I bet it has little to do with Clojure itself and primarily is driven by some other factors. There are tons of talks from various Clojure conferences on Youtube, where the speakers come from different startups.
nojito 6y ago
>Today it's the most widely used FP language; it has gained popularity and doing better than OCaml, Erlang/Elixir, Elm, Haskell, F#, and even Scala. I find it very hard to believe that clojure is beating out F#. F# has been included in the .NET runtime. Anyone who has c# automagically has f# available to them. Do you have a source to your claim? edit: guess not
- iLemming 6y ago
  > Anyone who has c# automagically has f# available to them So what? Anyone who buys a Mac, has off the bat access to Perl and Applescript. F# even though used in Fintech sector, failed to gain wider popularity, even within the .Net world, which is still largely driven by C#. > Do you have a source to your claim? - Clojure has more active podcasts than any of other FP lang: https://www.fpcasts.com https://www.fpcasts.com - Gathers more conferences: https://purelyfunctional.tv/functional-programming-conferences https://purelyfunctional.tv/functional-programming-conferenc... - More books published on Clojure: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Clojure https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Clojure - More companies actively using https://clojure.org/community/companies https://clojure.org/community/companies - It generates jobs: https://www.google.com/search?q=functional+programming+jobs https://www.google.com/search?q=functional+programming+jobs
  - nojito 6y ago
    >So what? Anyone who buys a Mac, has off the bat access to Perl and Applescript. Because the F# and C# communities are in the process of merging via .NET? >- Clojure has more active podcasts than any of other FP lang: https://www.fpcasts.com https://www.fpcasts.com - Gathers more conferences: https://purelyfunctional.tv/functional-programming-conferenc https://purelyfunctional.tv/functional-programming-conferenc... - More books published on Clojure: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Clojure https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Clojure - More companies actively using https://clojure.org/community/companies https://clojure.org/community/companies - It generates jobs: https://www.google.com/search?q=functional+programming+jobs https://www.google.com/search?q=functional+programming+jobs None of these really prove the argument you're trying to make though? Ignoring the C# and .NET communities when talking about F# to re-frame the argument so clojure always wins is not how any of this works.
codemac 6y ago
Right, and Google was using Golang extensively internally - but that doesn't mean it made the impact that docker's use did. I was curious about specific products/projects, seems like you may be able to answer my question. Do you know of any large product/projects in particular that are written in clojure and very popular?
- jdminhbg 6y ago
  CircleCI is a Clojure system, for one example.
- iLemming 6y ago
  pitch.com, grammarly, roamresearch, circleci, pandora, clubhouse.io, rate.com, Puppet... etc.
  - codemac 6y ago
    Awesome! I didn't realize Puppet was clojure, nor pandora.
  - cutler 6y ago
    I thought Puppet was a flagship Ruby project born before Clojure 1.0?
    - chris_j 6y ago
      Puppet made a big deal of adopting Clojure quite a few years ago: https://www.infoworld.com/article/2687553/puppet-server-drops-ruby-for-clojure.amp.html https://www.infoworld.com/article/2687553/puppet-server-drop...
uDontKnowMe 6y ago
I follow Clojure quite closely and am a huge booster of it, I even donate to a few projects, but I do think that the attitude of the community seems a bit too dismissive of questions about its adoption in the face of what seem to be pretty clear trends. A quick look on any job search site will show you that there are more positions asking for Elixir, and about 20x as many postings mentioning Scala. Of the positions I find on LinkedIn, even maybe half of the positions mentioning Clojure are mentioning it generally as in "experience with FP languages like Haskell/Elm/Clojure/Scala is a plus" rather than directly seeking Clojure devs. It's also lost about 80% of its search traffic in the last 3 years according to Google Trends (https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=%2Fm%2F03yb8hb https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=%2Fm%2F0...). It looks like despite how awesome Clojure is, there is something keeping it from achieving growth in adoption and the community should look at how to address that rather than look the other way.
- iLemming 6y ago
  > what seem to be pretty clear trends Clojure is a Lisp. Lispers simply failed to convince the younger generation of programmers how powerful and versatile Lisp can be. Any Lisp dialect these days gets rather automatically rejected. Of course, Clojure (or any other Lisp dialect) currently would struggle to gain momentum and compete with other non-lispy languages. But if you look at the stuff that Lispers are capable of incubating, you'd be amazed. Today Clojurists figuring out interop with Python, Julia and R. They've built Clojure-like PLs for other language ecosystems: Golang, Lua, Erlang, etc. They are pushing Clojurescript on microcontrollers. They're building neural networks, graph databases, and mobile apps. They're borrowing good ideas from other languages, frameworks, and tools. This isn't a sprint, it's a marathon. Look at the bigger picture. Notice things like Idris, which uses Chez Scheme for its backend. Chez Scheme is almost 40 years old! And within various Lisps, Clojure is undoubtedly a resounding success. If anything at this point truly could de-throne Clojure, it won't be something like Elixir. It would be a better, faster, perhaps more efficient fork of Clojure. What's keeping it from achieving growth in adoption is not something internal to Clojure. Or something that Clojurists can turn around. It's the fact that it is a Lisp. And that's not going to change. In fact, before Clojure, Lisps seemed to be getting out of fashion. Clojure made Lisp (somewhat) popular again.
cutler 6y ago
While Clojure may be growing incrementally placing it ahead of Scala is is just wishful thinking. Check Indeed job stats for a reality check.
- iLemming 6y ago
  Scala is on the curveball trajectory and might be at the start of a backslide. Many Scala projects reportedly are moving away from Scala, choosing new projects to be built in Kotlin and sometimes Java (since newly added features). https://snyk.io/blog/kotlin-overtakes-scala-and-clojure-to-become-the-2nd-most-popular-language-on-the-jvm/ https://snyk.io/blog/kotlin-overtakes-scala-and-clojure-to-b... Realistically, it doesn't matter, Clojure will never become the most popular JVM language after Java. Still, Scala's adoption is slowing down.

dominotw 6y ago

> The truth is - many companies realizing the incredible pragmatism of ideas behind Clojure. My employer is moving away from cljoure after 100% of the stack on clojure/clojurescript for over 10 yrs. All the companies that you mentioned ( with the exception of nubank) adopted Clojure years ago. Curious to know if there are new companies picking clojure, your comment seems to imply so.

pivo 6y ago
> My employer is moving away from cljoure I'd be interested in why that is if you have a moment to write a bit about it.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
iLemming 6y ago
I'm not an investor or someone whose job is to track companies and their tech stacks (I can't list them here), but there are many, many medium and small startups that adopted Clojure not too long ago (especially in European countries). Pitch.com was founded in 2018, Clubhouse.io, Metabase in 2014; Ladder in 2015; Flexiana, Watchful.io in 2016. Mind that these are official dates when the companies were established, some took at least a year, two, or even more to get going. Your case is anecdotal, and I bet it has little to do with Clojure itself and primarily is driven by some other factors. There are tons of talks from various Clojure conferences on Youtube, where the speakers come from different startups.

nojito 6y ago

>Today it's the most widely used FP language; it has gained popularity and doing better than OCaml, Erlang/Elixir, Elm, Haskell, F#, and even Scala. I find it very hard to believe that clojure is beating out F#. F# has been included in the .NET runtime. Anyone who has c# automagically has f# available to them. Do you have a source to your claim? edit: guess not

iLemming 6y ago
> Anyone who has c# automagically has f# available to them So what? Anyone who buys a Mac, has off the bat access to Perl and Applescript. F# even though used in Fintech sector, failed to gain wider popularity, even within the .Net world, which is still largely driven by C#. > Do you have a source to your claim? - Clojure has more active podcasts than any of other FP lang: https://www.fpcasts.com https://www.fpcasts.com - Gathers more conferences: https://purelyfunctional.tv/functional-programming-conferences https://purelyfunctional.tv/functional-programming-conferenc... - More books published on Clojure: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Clojure https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Clojure - More companies actively using https://clojure.org/community/companies https://clojure.org/community/companies - It generates jobs: https://www.google.com/search?q=functional+programming+jobs https://www.google.com/search?q=functional+programming+jobs
- nojito 6y ago
  >So what? Anyone who buys a Mac, has off the bat access to Perl and Applescript. Because the F# and C# communities are in the process of merging via .NET? >- Clojure has more active podcasts than any of other FP lang: https://www.fpcasts.com https://www.fpcasts.com - Gathers more conferences: https://purelyfunctional.tv/functional-programming-conferenc https://purelyfunctional.tv/functional-programming-conferenc... - More books published on Clojure: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Clojure https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Clojure - More companies actively using https://clojure.org/community/companies https://clojure.org/community/companies - It generates jobs: https://www.google.com/search?q=functional+programming+jobs https://www.google.com/search?q=functional+programming+jobs None of these really prove the argument you're trying to make though? Ignoring the C# and .NET communities when talking about F# to re-frame the argument so clojure always wins is not how any of this works.

codemac 6y ago

Right, and Google was using Golang extensively internally - but that doesn't mean it made the impact that docker's use did. I was curious about specific products/projects, seems like you may be able to answer my question. Do you know of any large product/projects in particular that are written in clojure and very popular?

jdminhbg 6y ago
CircleCI is a Clojure system, for one example.
iLemming 6y ago
pitch.com, grammarly, roamresearch, circleci, pandora, clubhouse.io, rate.com, Puppet... etc.
- codemac 6y ago
  Awesome! I didn't realize Puppet was clojure, nor pandora.
- cutler 6y ago
  I thought Puppet was a flagship Ruby project born before Clojure 1.0?
  - chris_j 6y ago
    Puppet made a big deal of adopting Clojure quite a few years ago: https://www.infoworld.com/article/2687553/puppet-server-drops-ruby-for-clojure.amp.html https://www.infoworld.com/article/2687553/puppet-server-drop...

uDontKnowMe 6y ago

I follow Clojure quite closely and am a huge booster of it, I even donate to a few projects, but I do think that the attitude of the community seems a bit too dismissive of questions about its adoption in the face of what seem to be pretty clear trends. A quick look on any job search site will show you that there are more positions asking for Elixir, and about 20x as many postings mentioning Scala. Of the positions I find on LinkedIn, even maybe half of the positions mentioning Clojure are mentioning it generally as in "experience with FP languages like Haskell/Elm/Clojure/Scala is a plus" rather than directly seeking Clojure devs. It's also lost about 80% of its search traffic in the last 3 years according to Google Trends (https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=%2Fm%2F03yb8hb https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=%2Fm%2F0...). It looks like despite how awesome Clojure is, there is something keeping it from achieving growth in adoption and the community should look at how to address that rather than look the other way.

iLemming 6y ago
> what seem to be pretty clear trends Clojure is a Lisp. Lispers simply failed to convince the younger generation of programmers how powerful and versatile Lisp can be. Any Lisp dialect these days gets rather automatically rejected. Of course, Clojure (or any other Lisp dialect) currently would struggle to gain momentum and compete with other non-lispy languages. But if you look at the stuff that Lispers are capable of incubating, you'd be amazed. Today Clojurists figuring out interop with Python, Julia and R. They've built Clojure-like PLs for other language ecosystems: Golang, Lua, Erlang, etc. They are pushing Clojurescript on microcontrollers. They're building neural networks, graph databases, and mobile apps. They're borrowing good ideas from other languages, frameworks, and tools. This isn't a sprint, it's a marathon. Look at the bigger picture. Notice things like Idris, which uses Chez Scheme for its backend. Chez Scheme is almost 40 years old! And within various Lisps, Clojure is undoubtedly a resounding success. If anything at this point truly could de-throne Clojure, it won't be something like Elixir. It would be a better, faster, perhaps more efficient fork of Clojure. What's keeping it from achieving growth in adoption is not something internal to Clojure. Or something that Clojurists can turn around. It's the fact that it is a Lisp. And that's not going to change. In fact, before Clojure, Lisps seemed to be getting out of fashion. Clojure made Lisp (somewhat) popular again.

cutler 6y ago

While Clojure may be growing incrementally placing it ahead of Scala is is just wishful thinking. Check Indeed job stats for a reality check.

iLemming 6y ago
Scala is on the curveball trajectory and might be at the start of a backslide. Many Scala projects reportedly are moving away from Scala, choosing new projects to be built in Kotlin and sometimes Java (since newly added features). https://snyk.io/blog/kotlin-overtakes-scala-and-clojure-to-become-the-2nd-most-popular-language-on-the-jvm/ https://snyk.io/blog/kotlin-overtakes-scala-and-clojure-to-b... Realistically, it doesn't matter, Clojure will never become the most popular JVM language after Java. Still, Scala's adoption is slowing down.