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My question with Babashka is always: why? Why force Clojure into something it is not? Why force some interpreter through the heavy GraalVM machinery to have a b

by zilti 3y ago

My question with Babashka is always: why? Why force Clojure into something it is not? Why force some interpreter through the heavy GraalVM machinery to have a binary interpreter for a language that wasn't meant for this? Just because "the syntax feels similar"? Might as well just use Scheme for such tasks, and invest the resources into other Clojure projects - Clojure has a need for that. Nonetheless it is an impressive achievement. Just one that I deem, like GraalVM's native compilation itself, an unnecessary one.

panick21_ 3y ago
You seem to suggest there is some platonic ideal use of clojure and this isn't it. But this simply isn't the case. Just because the first version of clojure was on the JVM doesn't mean all other uses are somehow 'lesser'. Why is simple, use the language you already know that has good libraries available for scripting.
- zilti 3y ago
  The thing is that this - unlike ClojureJVM, ClojureScript, ClojureCLR - only acts as if it were Clojure, while not actually being it, by lacking some core features and having a out of technical necessity convoluted "pod" mechanism. We're using it at work, together with Clojure, it works just fine, but it is the weird sibling.
sokoloff 3y ago
I see it differently. Consider a dev organization who is considering adopting Clojure as a supported (or even default) language. The case for such adoption is strengthened if you can make the argument that much of the shell scripting tasks can be done in the same* language and in a way that's more ergonomic and safer. That helps drive clojure adoption in a way that suggesting that instead dev teams adopting clojure should also learn scheme and write some of their code in that seems not nearly as compelling. It's the same reason that clojurescript is supportive of the overall clojure community, rather than being a distraction and diversion of resources. * It's not 100% the same, but for what's needed to replace bash scripts, it rounds to 100%.
akkad33 3y ago
It allows people who know clojure use it for scripting without the load time of JVM. Most similar implementations of other languages is to overcome some limitation of the original implementation. Like Pypy for python. People do not have to invest time to learn a different language for every use case

by zilti 3y ago

panick21_ 3y ago

You seem to suggest there is some platonic ideal use of clojure and this isn't it. But this simply isn't the case. Just because the first version of clojure was on the JVM doesn't mean all other uses are somehow 'lesser'. Why is simple, use the language you already know that has good libraries available for scripting.

zilti 3y ago
The thing is that this - unlike ClojureJVM, ClojureScript, ClojureCLR - only acts as if it were Clojure, while not actually being it, by lacking some core features and having a out of technical necessity convoluted "pod" mechanism. We're using it at work, together with Clojure, it works just fine, but it is the weird sibling.

sokoloff 3y ago

I see it differently. Consider a dev organization who is considering adopting Clojure as a supported (or even default) language. The case for such adoption is strengthened if you can make the argument that much of the shell scripting tasks can be done in the same* language and in a way that's more ergonomic and safer. That helps drive clojure adoption in a way that suggesting that instead dev teams adopting clojure should also learn scheme and write some of their code in that seems not nearly as compelling. It's the same reason that clojurescript is supportive of the overall clojure community, rather than being a distraction and diversion of resources. * It's not 100% the same, but for what's needed to replace bash scripts, it rounds to 100%.

akkad33 3y ago

It allows people who know clojure use it for scripting without the load time of JVM. Most similar implementations of other languages is to overcome some limitation of the original implementation. Like Pypy for python. People do not have to invest time to learn a different language for every use case