3 ms·

For the US, Google Trends reveals that Clojure's heyday came in 2013, and it has been on a decline since[0]. It never really reached the interest level of Scala

For the US, Google Trends reveals that Clojure's heyday came in 2013, and it has been on a decline since[0]. It never really reached the interest level of Scala, and of course recently Rust is consuming all the air in the room. Except, just for kicks I add Golang, and it turns out that all of the above are marginal compared to Go[1]. HN posts are very different from general interest, but yeah, I'd go with "Clojure has sadly missed on its shot to become a popular general-purpose language" rather than "Clojure is dead," but your instincts seem right. 0. https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=%2Fm%2F03yb8hb,%2Fm%2F0dsbpg6,%2Fm%2F091hdj https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=%... 1. https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=%2Fm%2F03yb8hb,%2Fm%2F0dsbpg6,%2Fm%2F091hdj,%2Fm%2F09gbxjr https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=%...

seancorfield 4y ago
Clojure never had a "shot to become a popular general-purpose language". That was never its goal. Popularity is not a useful measure of whether something is actually good technology. Clojure is designed to solve hard problems, for people who want something objectively "better" than mainstream tools. That's why it tends to attract more senior developers -- people who've felt the pain of other languages and want something better -- although we also see a steady stream of new developers who are interested in better tools even before they've felt that pain. Of course it's niche -- it's a Lisp! It's alien. It's "too different" for many companies or many developers to even consider it. And that's fine. The space is big enough for niche languages to thrive and for developers to build careers on them, if they wish to do so.
- deleted 4y ago
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3 ms·

For the US, Google Trends reveals that Clojure's heyday came in 2013, and it has been on a decline since[0]. It never really reached the interest level of Scala

by pwinnski 4y ago

seancorfield 4y ago
Clojure never had a "shot to become a popular general-purpose language". That was never its goal. Popularity is not a useful measure of whether something is actually good technology. Clojure is designed to solve hard problems, for people who want something objectively "better" than mainstream tools. That's why it tends to attract more senior developers -- people who've felt the pain of other languages and want something better -- although we also see a steady stream of new developers who are interested in better tools even before they've felt that pain. Of course it's niche -- it's a Lisp! It's alien. It's "too different" for many companies or many developers to even consider it. And that's fine. The space is big enough for niche languages to thrive and for developers to build careers on them, if they wish to do so.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]