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Maybe since I consider myself more of a software engineer than a developer, I have a different viewpoint, but to me, as a SE, my job is not just to deliver the

Maybe since I consider myself more of a software engineer than a developer, I have a different viewpoint, but to me, as a SE, my job is not just to deliver the end product, but actually to produce the version of the end product that is also of as good quality as it can be within the budget and constraints of the business, as well as guarantee enough architectural runway to meet the business future goals and needs without increasing the future cost or lowering the delivery velocity over time. Often, I even contribute to what the end product should be, by consulting and informing on what can or cannot be achieved with technologies, or how by changing certain aspect of the product we can enable a lot more functionality in other ways. That means, throwing a scaffolded template and a prefab framework might be good for an initial proof of concept and v0 testing the market launch, but with Clojure you can often deliver POCs and v0s just as fast, but then have the flexibility to grow it as it needs too, where frameworks often become big drag on what you can do and how quickly you can do so as you need to grow the product. Basically, the inner working matters to the end product, especially when products don't have an end, but are really a lifetime of support and continued changes in feature-set and compatibility/scale.

jb1991 4y ago
Valid perspective for some developers, yet thousands of software engineers enjoy creative, satisfying careers building projects without concerns for the inner workings of a web library or the extra effort to engineer the stack directly. They just want to build the product using an established framework.
- blain_the_train 4y ago
  and clojure has several such frameworks.
  - jb1991 4y ago
    ... but nothing like rails, hence this article and discussion
- didibus 4y ago
  I totally respect that, and Clojure could invest more in offering frameworks or even no-code platforms or such features, but the truth is it doesn't. The language very much targets the people who are interested in not just the functional requirements, but also the non-functional requirements of performance, scale, architectural runway, future extensibility, operations, maintainability, correctness, re-usability, etc. Especially, Clojure targets those who believe a balance between all these and functional requirements is the holy grail. That's why it won't be the most correct, the most performant, the most productive, but a pragmatic balance of all these in almost equal parts. Maybe it should also embrace the people looking to get a product out by simply using a framework, and I'd say there's more of that in Clojure today than ever before, but the community I think is more composed of the former people that I describe, which is why you don't see any attempted framework take hold in the community, because most current members are not in the group that "just want to build the product using an established framework". I think the community has settled, ounce again, on a bit of a balanced approach, Kit (https://github.com/kit-clj/kit https://github.com/kit-clj/kit) and Edge (https://github.com/juxt/edge https://github.com/juxt/edge) are such hybrids. And some more direct viable frameworks have come along like Biff (https://biffweb.com/ https://biffweb.com/) and Fulcro (https://fulcro.fulcrologic.com/ https://fulcro.fulcrologic.com/). That said, since the community is more composed of people like me, you don't see a mass move of every Clojurian switching to one of those. So it creates some questions? 1. Is it a problem that the language targets engineers more interested in a balance between non-functional and functional? 2. Should it be mutually exclusive, or can Clojure equally serve both niche? And if so, should it, why? 3. Is the claim that you can be as productive and it is just as easy to build a product without using a framework in Clojure true? Does this apply to everyone, or only certain personalities or people with certain amount of lower level knowledge? 4. Is Clojure's marketing misleading? Are people looking to just "build the product using an established framework" mislead in thinking Clojure will offer them salvation? 5. Where do most developer fall in, if they don't fall in the category Clojure currently targets, then does that mean Clojure cannot become mainstream? To go mainstream does it mean you have to target frameworks because there are more developers looking to just make a product using a framework? I don't have answers to these, I'm just trying to define the current state and what the problem with it might be, or if it even is a problem.

jb1991 4y ago

Valid perspective for some developers, yet thousands of software engineers enjoy creative, satisfying careers building projects without concerns for the inner workings of a web library or the extra effort to engineer the stack directly. They just want to build the product using an established framework.

blain_the_train 4y ago
and clojure has several such frameworks.
- jb1991 4y ago
  ... but nothing like rails, hence this article and discussion
didibus 4y ago
I totally respect that, and Clojure could invest more in offering frameworks or even no-code platforms or such features, but the truth is it doesn't. The language very much targets the people who are interested in not just the functional requirements, but also the non-functional requirements of performance, scale, architectural runway, future extensibility, operations, maintainability, correctness, re-usability, etc. Especially, Clojure targets those who believe a balance between all these and functional requirements is the holy grail. That's why it won't be the most correct, the most performant, the most productive, but a pragmatic balance of all these in almost equal parts. Maybe it should also embrace the people looking to get a product out by simply using a framework, and I'd say there's more of that in Clojure today than ever before, but the community I think is more composed of the former people that I describe, which is why you don't see any attempted framework take hold in the community, because most current members are not in the group that "just want to build the product using an established framework". I think the community has settled, ounce again, on a bit of a balanced approach, Kit (https://github.com/kit-clj/kit https://github.com/kit-clj/kit) and Edge (https://github.com/juxt/edge https://github.com/juxt/edge) are such hybrids. And some more direct viable frameworks have come along like Biff (https://biffweb.com/ https://biffweb.com/) and Fulcro (https://fulcro.fulcrologic.com/ https://fulcro.fulcrologic.com/). That said, since the community is more composed of people like me, you don't see a mass move of every Clojurian switching to one of those. So it creates some questions? 1. Is it a problem that the language targets engineers more interested in a balance between non-functional and functional? 2. Should it be mutually exclusive, or can Clojure equally serve both niche? And if so, should it, why? 3. Is the claim that you can be as productive and it is just as easy to build a product without using a framework in Clojure true? Does this apply to everyone, or only certain personalities or people with certain amount of lower level knowledge? 4. Is Clojure's marketing misleading? Are people looking to just "build the product using an established framework" mislead in thinking Clojure will offer them salvation? 5. Where do most developer fall in, if they don't fall in the category Clojure currently targets, then does that mean Clojure cannot become mainstream? To go mainstream does it mean you have to target frameworks because there are more developers looking to just make a product using a framework? I don't have answers to these, I'm just trying to define the current state and what the problem with it might be, or if it even is a problem.