3 ms·

Cargo culting is basically doing something you don't understand, hoping that it'll accomplish your goals. You can see this heavily in the Clojure community, at

• VLM 5y ago
  Its a culture clash. The Java people have the ISO9000 engineers who are extremely proud of their documented and approved 175 page procedure explaining every detailed step of how its an enormous amount of extra work but technically possible to remove replace and reinstall a 400 Hz power converter. The Clojure people have the simplicate and add lightness aerospace engineer people who proudly re-engineered the plane's electrical system to not require a 400 Hz power converter anymore, resulting in a lighter, faster, cheaper, more reliable, simpler aircraft. Follow the money... can't sell replacement parts if the plane doesn't use them, so you can guess what corporate thinks of "simplicate and add lightness" designs. Much like in software there's an expanding gap between software people try to sell you vs software you paid to develop for yourself. The cognitive load on the dev is higher, but its technically possible to write lispy functional style programs in Java if you follow rules about versions and if you drag all the other required complexity of Java into it ... its just simpler to write in Clojure.