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Why did your daughter hate Clojure ? Was it the language or the tools/ecosystem? (Curious on what beginners find difficult)

Hammershaft 5y ago
As someone who is not a beginner the feedback on errors / stack traces is absolutely miserable, some of the worst of any high level language I've used. This is doubly true for clojurescript.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- capableweb 5y ago
  Yeah, this is true. Lots of people start using Clojure without knowing the underlying hosts (the JVM for Clojure, JavaScript for ClojureScript) which I also did, with zero experience of the JVM before I learned Clojure, and it can get very daunting very quickly the first times you come across endless JVM stack traces. Fortunately when I started to use ClojureScript, I was already deep into the JavaScript ecosystem, so those stack traces were not a problem, and by now the JVM ones no longer scare me. Practice makes perfect, but without previous experience in the host languages, it's completely understandable that the stack traces are a huge turnoff.
  - no_wizard 5y ago
    Clojure runs in the CLR too https://clojure.org/about/clojureclr https://clojure.org/about/clojureclr
    - capableweb 5y ago
      And even more languages than that! Erlang, Dart, and a couple more are some that I've come across recently. And my point is valid for all of those language, if you don't know the host, the errors/exceptions coming from using Clojure in those languages will confuse you initially, no matter how well you know Clojure itself.
jesushax 5y ago
It was mostly the tools. We couldn't even get Calva to run properly in VS Code on her computer (we just gave up, mysterious errors and none of the recommended fixes online helped). Plus she liked that Python has an "intuitive" feel, just looking at code it kind of makes sense, whereas Clojure looked crazy and meaningless unless you "knew". Which would have been mysterious and exciting for me, but was intimidating and dreadful for her.

Hammershaft 5y ago

As someone who is not a beginner the feedback on errors / stack traces is absolutely miserable, some of the worst of any high level language I've used. This is doubly true for clojurescript.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
capableweb 5y ago
Yeah, this is true. Lots of people start using Clojure without knowing the underlying hosts (the JVM for Clojure, JavaScript for ClojureScript) which I also did, with zero experience of the JVM before I learned Clojure, and it can get very daunting very quickly the first times you come across endless JVM stack traces. Fortunately when I started to use ClojureScript, I was already deep into the JavaScript ecosystem, so those stack traces were not a problem, and by now the JVM ones no longer scare me. Practice makes perfect, but without previous experience in the host languages, it's completely understandable that the stack traces are a huge turnoff.
- no_wizard 5y ago
  Clojure runs in the CLR too https://clojure.org/about/clojureclr https://clojure.org/about/clojureclr
  - capableweb 5y ago
    And even more languages than that! Erlang, Dart, and a couple more are some that I've come across recently. And my point is valid for all of those language, if you don't know the host, the errors/exceptions coming from using Clojure in those languages will confuse you initially, no matter how well you know Clojure itself.

jesushax 5y ago

It was mostly the tools. We couldn't even get Calva to run properly in VS Code on her computer (we just gave up, mysterious errors and none of the recommended fixes online helped). Plus she liked that Python has an "intuitive" feel, just looking at code it kind of makes sense, whereas Clojure looked crazy and meaningless unless you "knew". Which would have been mysterious and exciting for me, but was intimidating and dreadful for her.