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I've worked around an open source Clojure codebase for a few years. I've grown to dislike Clojure by virtue of the culture it apparently fosters. As a community
by patcon 2y ago
I've worked around an open source Clojure codebase for a few years. I've grown to dislike Clojure by virtue of the culture it apparently fosters. As a community organizer in some vibrant decentralized spaces, reading articles from inside the community gives me ick feelings. There's a strange phenonemon involved when you have a diehard community that continually extols the virtues of the language, while the popularity of the language itself halves its open source marketshare every few years.
I mean, you have to try really hard to cultivate a community of people who have a deep love for something, but for some reason can't see what is actually wrong with it that drives ppl away. Passionate users are usually a boon, but apparently not for Clojure. But people somehow seem to build great companies with it. It's strange, and very specific to Clojure culture. I can't help but assume its failure to capture market is tightly tied to its leadership style and/or leader worship.
Anyhow, these are just hot-takes from the margins. I'm sure that passionate users will have something to say, or maybe downvote me.
- j45 2y agoHow to support the creation of beginners might be a different topic (and not a new one to technologies) to the offer of the technology itself. How was your experience in working with the existing Clojure codebase?
- patcon 2y agoVery true. Thanks for noting that. The codebase was democracy-related civic tech software. I was a bit biased against Clojure because I wished for the world to show up in the codebase, but it was written in an uncommon language that scared away most every coder who showed up with curiosity. Probably just the wrong language for the culture I wished to exist around the software. Plus the maintainers used Rich's essays to emphasize their desired ethos of "singular vision" development, which I admittedly became resentful of.
- patcon 2y agoI thought of an analogy later, which perhaps colors my experience -- writing democracy software in Clojure felt disappointing, loaded with a power dynamic kinda like the Catholic bible and service being conducted in Latin before the 1960s. It was not a language "of the people". And not just in how uncommonly known it was, but even the philosophy in how the language governed itself. It felt harmful to me: the cross-pollination between the ethos of the Clojure project (via the well-intentioned developer who brought pieces of Clojure culture into conversations and discussions) and the democracy project.
- lukev 2y agoI think there's something here. I'm not sure it's a bad thing. A negative framing might be that there's a sort of elitism. A more positive framing might be that it simply reflects a tension between different, valid views of how to build software which are sometimes (but not always) in tension. After all, an elitist can also sometimes be right. Disclosure: I say this as someone who has been about as deep as you can go in the Clojure community.
- KingMob 2y agoAs someone who was equally deep (I worked with you and the Danes), I think a lot of that elitism isn't just about building software. It's a large part of why I've stepped back from clj these days.
- patcon 2y ago> A negative framing might be that there's a sort of elitism. A more positive framing might be that it simply reflects a tension between different, valid views of how to build software which are sometimes (but not always) in tension. I really like this framing of "in tension". Multiple things can be true. I think it represents a healthy tension that I'm grateful exists, even if I'd not personally wish to be operating in that specific tension. But I'm sure the people living in are different than me, and can do things in this world that I could not :)
- eduction 2y agoI started four years ago and in some ways still feel like a beginner. I have found the community super welcoming and positive - I’ve asked questions on r/Clojure, clojureverse, Ask Clojure and the Slack. A couple of my Slack and Ask Clojure questions were in retrospect poorly researched and I still got super helpful replies. Did you encounter some hostility?
- neillyons 2y ago> really hard to cultivate a community of people who have a deep love for something, but for some reason can't see what is actually wrong with it that drives ppl away Elm is another example