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I am almost 30 and attempting to learn Clojure was to me like swimming through mud. It is definitely not just you.

by danuker 5y ago

rawoke083600 5y ago
>swimming through mud You describe it perfectly !
- danuker 5y ago
  Thanks! That being said, I just played around with it for a few days. Some people praise it, after having gone through a few years on and off: > I wasn’t convinced right away. It took a few years. But after the usual stumbling around and frustration, I began to realize that this language was the easiest, most elegant, least imposing language I had ever used – and not by a small margin. https://blog.cleancoder.com/uncle-bob/2019/08/22/WhyClojure.html https://blog.cleancoder.com/uncle-bob/2019/08/22/WhyClojure.... I also explored the language landscape, and Clojure projects on GitHub seem to have a low density of commits matching "fix OR fixed OR bugfix": https://danuker.go.ro/frequency-of-bugfix-commits.html https://danuker.go.ro/frequency-of-bugfix-commits.html It's also on the brevity-popularity Pareto front of my bug-ridden analysis: https://danuker.go.ro/programming-languages.html https://danuker.go.ro/programming-languages.html So I plan to look at it some more.
jwr 5y ago
I think this could be particularly difficult for people (just guessing here) who haven't used a functional approach in the past. The shift from procedural imperative thinking to functional thinking is not obvious, and Clojure strongly pushes you to use immutability right away, too. That can be a steep learning curve. I can tell you that the payoff at the end is huge, though :-) As a side note, I'd highly suggest that everyone reads "Seven Languages in Seven Weeks" (https://pragprog.com/titles/btlang/seven-languages-in-seven-weeks/ https://pragprog.com/titles/btlang/seven-languages-in-seven-...). There are many programming paradigms and opening your mind to them is a great investment in the future.
gorjusborg 5y ago
I feel like the longer you've been steeped in OOP the harder it is to get over the hump. Clojure also has a lot of bells and whistles that aren't really FP but add to what you have to learn. For anyone wanting to learn FP, I'd recommend trying a more pure FP language like Scheme first.
mbrodersen 5y ago
The problem is not Clojure (or Haskell or …) The problem is having to unlearn OO thinking and understanding a very different way to view the world. But that is a good thing! If you are not struggling learning then you are not really learning anything new. Just a different flavour of what you already know (another OO language with a slightly different syntax and slightly different API).

I am almost 30 and attempting to learn Clojure was to me like swimming through mud. It is definitely not just you.

rawoke083600 5y ago

>swimming through mud You describe it perfectly !

danuker 5y ago
Thanks! That being said, I just played around with it for a few days. Some people praise it, after having gone through a few years on and off: > I wasn’t convinced right away. It took a few years. But after the usual stumbling around and frustration, I began to realize that this language was the easiest, most elegant, least imposing language I had ever used – and not by a small margin. https://blog.cleancoder.com/uncle-bob/2019/08/22/WhyClojure.html https://blog.cleancoder.com/uncle-bob/2019/08/22/WhyClojure.... I also explored the language landscape, and Clojure projects on GitHub seem to have a low density of commits matching "fix OR fixed OR bugfix": https://danuker.go.ro/frequency-of-bugfix-commits.html https://danuker.go.ro/frequency-of-bugfix-commits.html It's also on the brevity-popularity Pareto front of my bug-ridden analysis: https://danuker.go.ro/programming-languages.html https://danuker.go.ro/programming-languages.html So I plan to look at it some more.

jwr 5y ago

I think this could be particularly difficult for people (just guessing here) who haven't used a functional approach in the past. The shift from procedural imperative thinking to functional thinking is not obvious, and Clojure strongly pushes you to use immutability right away, too. That can be a steep learning curve. I can tell you that the payoff at the end is huge, though :-) As a side note, I'd highly suggest that everyone reads "Seven Languages in Seven Weeks" (https://pragprog.com/titles/btlang/seven-languages-in-seven-weeks/ https://pragprog.com/titles/btlang/seven-languages-in-seven-...). There are many programming paradigms and opening your mind to them is a great investment in the future.

gorjusborg 5y ago

I feel like the longer you've been steeped in OOP the harder it is to get over the hump. Clojure also has a lot of bells and whistles that aren't really FP but add to what you have to learn. For anyone wanting to learn FP, I'd recommend trying a more pure FP language like Scheme first.

mbrodersen 5y ago

The problem is not Clojure (or Haskell or …) The problem is having to unlearn OO thinking and understanding a very different way to view the world. But that is a good thing! If you are not struggling learning then you are not really learning anything new. Just a different flavour of what you already know (another OO language with a slightly different syntax and slightly different API).