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To me, the most compelling aspect of Clojure is it's very well designed standard library and ecosystem access via Java. Pretty much everything else is a negativ

To me, the most compelling aspect of Clojure is it's very well designed standard library and ecosystem access via Java. Pretty much everything else is a negative. Even then, the ecosystem is a Faustian bargain.

wk_end 3y ago
Can you elaborate? As an outsider, most of the time I hear people say some variation on "Clojure would be great but I stay away because of Java".
- shrimp_emoji 3y ago
  That was what drove me away. The bloat of the JVM, and the implication of Java down the road, made me nauseous.
  - gorjusborg 3y ago
    Extreme dislike of the JVM/Java always makes me curious. What languages do you work with that would make Java so painful to stoop to?
- packetlost 3y ago
  Clojure has a pretty well designed standard library and makes (IMO) a lot of good tradeoff decisions for many kinds of development. That stigma round Java is kind of exactly my point about the Faustian bargain. You get access to the Java ecosystem but pay the cost of being tied to the Java ecosystem in some capacity. Now, I think the JVM is actually really good. Yes, it's a bit "chunky" (slow startup times, not very ergonomic UX), but it's very performant and it runs pretty much everywhere.
gorjusborg 3y ago
The immutable persistent data structures are amazing. The STM and concurrency support are great. The interop with java is great, but is also a bit of a curse in that there's a bit too much reliance on java libs rather than people writing high-quality language native ones. The sexp-based collection literals are very convenient, and coupled with the threading macros make writing and reading clojure code very productive and fun. Clojure has a lot going for it. The biggest issue I have with it is the same issue I have with any 'hosted' language. If it doesn't own the runtime, it risks being broken or held-back by changes it has no control over. Clojure is conceptually and syntactically simple, so it probably fares better than other JVM-hosted languages, and the JVM itself has historically been very stable at the bytecode level, but it still a risky thing to require your platform to stay stable for your language ecosystem to survive. I love you Clojure, but I'd rather invest in a language that controls its own destiny.
- packetlost 3y ago
  Invest in Gerbil Scheme!
  - NotChina 3y ago
    [dead]

wk_end 3y ago

Can you elaborate? As an outsider, most of the time I hear people say some variation on "Clojure would be great but I stay away because of Java".

shrimp_emoji 3y ago
That was what drove me away. The bloat of the JVM, and the implication of Java down the road, made me nauseous.
- gorjusborg 3y ago
  Extreme dislike of the JVM/Java always makes me curious. What languages do you work with that would make Java so painful to stoop to?
packetlost 3y ago
Clojure has a pretty well designed standard library and makes (IMO) a lot of good tradeoff decisions for many kinds of development. That stigma round Java is kind of exactly my point about the Faustian bargain. You get access to the Java ecosystem but pay the cost of being tied to the Java ecosystem in some capacity. Now, I think the JVM is actually really good. Yes, it's a bit "chunky" (slow startup times, not very ergonomic UX), but it's very performant and it runs pretty much everywhere.

gorjusborg 3y ago

The immutable persistent data structures are amazing. The STM and concurrency support are great. The interop with java is great, but is also a bit of a curse in that there's a bit too much reliance on java libs rather than people writing high-quality language native ones. The sexp-based collection literals are very convenient, and coupled with the threading macros make writing and reading clojure code very productive and fun. Clojure has a lot going for it. The biggest issue I have with it is the same issue I have with any 'hosted' language. If it doesn't own the runtime, it risks being broken or held-back by changes it has no control over. Clojure is conceptually and syntactically simple, so it probably fares better than other JVM-hosted languages, and the JVM itself has historically been very stable at the bytecode level, but it still a risky thing to require your platform to stay stable for your language ecosystem to survive. I love you Clojure, but I'd rather invest in a language that controls its own destiny.

packetlost 3y ago
Invest in Gerbil Scheme!
- NotChina 3y ago
  [dead]