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Clojure and Java interop works and that's great. What's really interesting about this situation is that there's one guy committing code in a completely differen

by edsrzf 15y ago

Clojure and Java interop works and that's great. What's really interesting about this situation is that there's one guy committing code in a completely different language from everyone else. Not only that, but it's a language that most would consider "weird". How well is that received by the rest of the team? Is anyone else picking up Clojure or is it "that one guy's crazy code that no one can understand"? I think we've all seen latter situation even when everyone's coding in the same language and it's a huge red flag. I'm all for new and different languages seeing business use, but doing it this way seems potentially harmful. But maybe it was a huge success here; I'd love to hear more about it.

JayFields 15y ago
Since you asked... There's only 2 of us, and the other guy also wanted to learn Clojure. His response to my statement was: "That's part of the reason I want you on the team, we need to advance some of the tech on the project." Also, Clojure has been in use at DRW for over 3 years, so adding it to another project wasn't actually that big of a deal. I know all that context wasn't in the article, so I think your questions are on point - but, I think that info isn't really on topic for the article, which is why I left it out.
- edsrzf 15y ago
  Thanks! I'm totally fine with the fact that you left it out of the article. The little bit of a story you did share just made me curious.
plinkplonk 15y ago
You are missing a lot of context. The DRW tech team has a lot of ex ThoughtWorkers - many of the best got tired of traveling around for consulting assignments and were snapped up by DRW. Jay was a very respected dev when he was at TW (we worked on a project together- hi Jay!), and if I were trying to hire him I would be hiring him specifically so that he could raise the bar. Adding Clojure to a java code base is trivial, especially given the calibre of the DRW team. The idea at TW when I was there was that languages were expected to change and devs were supposed to "level up" as part of their job description. TW had the policy that "technical decisions are made by technical people" and I wouldn't be surprised if DRW had something similiar. What mix of languages should be used on a project should (imo) be made by developers who work on that code base. If Jay insists on working in a language he knows (from experience, he is a great Java dev) to be better, then more power to him.

by edsrzf 15y ago

JayFields 15y ago

Since you asked... There's only 2 of us, and the other guy also wanted to learn Clojure. His response to my statement was: "That's part of the reason I want you on the team, we need to advance some of the tech on the project." Also, Clojure has been in use at DRW for over 3 years, so adding it to another project wasn't actually that big of a deal. I know all that context wasn't in the article, so I think your questions are on point - but, I think that info isn't really on topic for the article, which is why I left it out.

edsrzf 15y ago
Thanks! I'm totally fine with the fact that you left it out of the article. The little bit of a story you did share just made me curious.

plinkplonk 15y ago

You are missing a lot of context. The DRW tech team has a lot of ex ThoughtWorkers - many of the best got tired of traveling around for consulting assignments and were snapped up by DRW. Jay was a very respected dev when he was at TW (we worked on a project together- hi Jay!), and if I were trying to hire him I would be hiring him specifically so that he could raise the bar. Adding Clojure to a java code base is trivial, especially given the calibre of the DRW team. The idea at TW when I was there was that languages were expected to change and devs were supposed to "level up" as part of their job description. TW had the policy that "technical decisions are made by technical people" and I wouldn't be surprised if DRW had something similiar. What mix of languages should be used on a project should (imo) be made by developers who work on that code base. If Jay insists on working in a language he knows (from experience, he is a great Java dev) to be better, then more power to him.