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Serious question, and I apologize for the strong language: why should I give a shit about the language a service I consume is written in? Why does it matter it’

by yladiz 3y ago

Serious question, and I apologize for the strong language: why should I give a shit about the language a service I consume is written in? Why does it matter it’s in Clojure? I am professionally a Clojure dev so it’s cool to see something written in Clojure like this, but why should I care about that? This is one of the things I really dislike about the community. Yes, Clojure is a powerful language, and I really enjoy working with it, but I often feel that the community has some kind of imposter syndrome that drives the need to tell others and justify the use of the language in some project, and it’s weird.

acdha 3y ago
Typically it’s most important for languages which haven’t yet hit the level of acceptance that people still worry about being allowed to use them. I remember back in the 90s PHP and Python developers sharing examples like that because it answered business questions like “why aren’t we using Microsoft’s ASP?”
- bmelton 3y ago
  People think of Python as ubiquitous now, but forget how common it used to be for there to be articles titled things like "How to Convince Your Boss that Python is Good For Your Business" on HN and Slashdot back in the day
VikingCoder 3y ago
Perhaps you can send them code to execute server-side in a transaction? And so using their API means you have to develop in Clojure, too? Or they're trying to attract developers to come work for them?
fnordsensei 3y ago
This is a blog post by one Clojure company, interviewing another Clojure company, with a tech stack focus. It’s not unusual within any language stack to have these kinds of blog posts - they’re obviously by and for people who find the technology interesting. I don’t get your point. Is this somehow not appropriate behavior amongst civilized society? Your remark comes across as not a little bit ignorant. Maybe you should just learn that if you “don’t give a shit”, you also don’t have to engage, and let the author write whatever they want.
- yladiz 3y ago
  I think you misunderstand my point. I will admit that it was vitriolic, somewhat intentionally so, and conflated my general annoyance at posts that seem to virtue signal about the language they're using for their product, and this happening specifically in the Clojure community, but my point is not that it's inappropriate and I don't think I come across as ignorant here and so I disagree with that characterization. I also don't think it's fair to say I should just, paraphrasing, "sit down and shut up" if I have some criticism, because, taken further, it's a way to just dismiss criticism as negative even if it is constructive. To be clearer, my point is two fold: 1. Why should I care about the language that a specific service is written in, be it Clojure, Rust, TypeScript, etc.? As a language user it's cool, but as a buyer (which, of course is not the target audience of this blog post) I don't think it matters the language as long as the product works well. For a bank, I couldn't care less if it's written in COBOL, Java, JavaScript, Piet, as long as my money is safe and transactions are handled correctly. 2. It feels like there are a lot of Clojure posts that go into the territory of putting Clojure on a pedestal, making it out to be the best language, etc. when in reality it is a tool, which excels at a lot of good tasks, but not every task, and while I may be biased it sometimes feels like the community needs to justify the existence of the language, that there's some kind of imposter syndrome. Maybe I would be less annoyed about this if I saw many/any posts about the pitfalls and difficulties of using Clojure.

by yladiz 3y ago

acdha 3y ago

Typically it’s most important for languages which haven’t yet hit the level of acceptance that people still worry about being allowed to use them. I remember back in the 90s PHP and Python developers sharing examples like that because it answered business questions like “why aren’t we using Microsoft’s ASP?”

bmelton 3y ago
People think of Python as ubiquitous now, but forget how common it used to be for there to be articles titled things like "How to Convince Your Boss that Python is Good For Your Business" on HN and Slashdot back in the day

VikingCoder 3y ago

Perhaps you can send them code to execute server-side in a transaction? And so using their API means you have to develop in Clojure, too? Or they're trying to attract developers to come work for them?

fnordsensei 3y ago

This is a blog post by one Clojure company, interviewing another Clojure company, with a tech stack focus. It’s not unusual within any language stack to have these kinds of blog posts - they’re obviously by and for people who find the technology interesting. I don’t get your point. Is this somehow not appropriate behavior amongst civilized society? Your remark comes across as not a little bit ignorant. Maybe you should just learn that if you “don’t give a shit”, you also don’t have to engage, and let the author write whatever they want.

yladiz 3y ago
I think you misunderstand my point. I will admit that it was vitriolic, somewhat intentionally so, and conflated my general annoyance at posts that seem to virtue signal about the language they're using for their product, and this happening specifically in the Clojure community, but my point is not that it's inappropriate and I don't think I come across as ignorant here and so I disagree with that characterization. I also don't think it's fair to say I should just, paraphrasing, "sit down and shut up" if I have some criticism, because, taken further, it's a way to just dismiss criticism as negative even if it is constructive. To be clearer, my point is two fold: 1. Why should I care about the language that a specific service is written in, be it Clojure, Rust, TypeScript, etc.? As a language user it's cool, but as a buyer (which, of course is not the target audience of this blog post) I don't think it matters the language as long as the product works well. For a bank, I couldn't care less if it's written in COBOL, Java, JavaScript, Piet, as long as my money is safe and transactions are handled correctly. 2. It feels like there are a lot of Clojure posts that go into the territory of putting Clojure on a pedestal, making it out to be the best language, etc. when in reality it is a tool, which excels at a lot of good tasks, but not every task, and while I may be biased it sometimes feels like the community needs to justify the existence of the language, that there's some kind of imposter syndrome. Maybe I would be less annoyed about this if I saw many/any posts about the pitfalls and difficulties of using Clojure.