6 ms·

Results of the 2012 State of Clojure survey

125 points by mattdeboard 14y ago

mtrn 14y ago
Interestingly, Rob Pike mentioned in a recent talk, that most people come to Go from Ruby and Python (http://commandcenter.blogspot.de/2012/06/less-is-exponentially-more.html http://commandcenter.blogspot.de/2012/06/less-is-exponential...) and it seems to be a similar case with Clojure. And Python and Ruby are sure languages, people like to program in.
- elarkin 14y ago
  I suspect that Ruby and Python programmers are likely in a better position to switch than are programmers in other languages. For example, if you're in the CLR or the JVM already, there's a lot of reason not to move. Ruby and Python's relative obscurity might work to their benefit.
  - mtrn 14y ago
    >For example, if you're in the CLR or the JVM already, there's a lot of reason not to move. Yes, it seems economic. After investing time in the larger and more enterprise-focused ecosystems, you'll probably have less incentives to try or move to something else. That's not implying, that Python and Ruby don't have great ecosystems themselves.
  - duaneb 14y ago
    Ruby and Python programmers HAVE to be able to switch, otherwise they're unemployable. I can't think of any pure-python (or ruby) stack, and if you can't maintain your stack, you're going to have problems.
  - joshuakarjala 14y ago
    I guess you could also somewhat argue, that programmers who have already potentially jumped (or diversified) from something that was more mainstream (PHP, Java, C# etc.) to Python/Ruby - are more prone to jump or at least try out new languages. Or more cynically they have a higher potential of being language hipsters :)
- espeed 14y ago
  Python and Ruby devs will probably continue to move to Clojure and Go for the concurrency models. The multicore reality is only going to become more relevant, and right now Clojure and Go have the most compelling concurrency stories.
Toshio 14y ago
Are there equivalent surveys for Haskell / Erlang / other functional languages? Why is Clojure the only community that does this?
- nandemo 14y ago
  State of Haskell, 2011: http://blog.johantibell.com/2011/08/results-from-state-of-haskell-2011.html http://blog.johantibell.com/2011/08/results-from-state-of-ha...
- puredanger 14y ago
  Because Chas is awesome? :)
- dons 14y ago
  Haskell community surveys and reports have been going on since the early 00s
raju 14y ago
There’s no data from previous years to compare this to, but whatever the curve of growth of Leiningen, technomancy & co. deserve a ton of credit for shaving the yaks and herding the cats to build it up into what it has become today. People’s everyday Clojure experience is greatly enhanced by the get-out-of-the-way approach taken by Leiningen, and I think we’re all better off for it. Yes, yes, a thousand times yes! Phil Hagelberg (a.k.a technomancy and a fellow HN'er) has done (along with many others) has done a great job of providing a great stack to start working with Clojure. From emacs-starter-kit to clojure-mode to smooth integration with leiningen, all Clojure enthusiasts and developers alike save so much in yak-shaving. Someday perhaps I will get a chance to say thank you in person, but allow me to start here - Great job guys, and thank you!
- mej10 14y ago
  I just want to second this. Especially with Leiningen, swank-clojure and clojure-mode, getting everything set up with emacs was extremely easy. It was exactly how it should be. Leiningen has "just-worked" for me from day one. Everything I have wanted to do has not only been possible, but very straightforward.
- pbiggar 14y ago
  It's also incredibly impressive that cake and lein were competing, and decided to join forces to bring the advantages of both to lein. We're not on lein2 yet, but it looks pretty compelling.
saurik 14y ago
> What language did you use just prior to adopting Clojure — or, if Clojure is not your primary language now, what is that primary language? This is just a silly question: almost every single day I am using all of bash, HTML, Python, Objective-C++, Java, C, C++, JavaScript, and SQL. This is required because I do work on a mobile application targeting iOS, Android, and "the browser" that has a server part and native components on the clients (using a mix of custom and off-the-shelf open-source codebases). So, what is my "primary language"? I'd simply argue I don't have one, and I haven't had one for a decade. The idea of having a primary language honestly comes off to me as a sign that the developer hasn't spent much time programming yet: the real world has so many languages in it, and many times the practical choice is constrained by that of the platform or existing code to interoperate with. The question about what language I used just prior to adopting Clojure is also not going to work very well: it was probably bash, as I used that language to download and setup Clojure. It may have been something like Haskell, as I might have been in an experimenting mood that day. It could have been any of the above "used" set (as I probably just had "learn Clojure" on my todo list right after something else random). The result of that version of the question doesn't really have meaning. A much better question might be, "for the tasks that you find yourself now using Clojure, what language do you now feel you are most using less often?" (although spending some more time on the poor "most/less" phrasing that I left in that might cause problems with non-English speakers). This question better handles people who are long past the idea that they primarily code in some specific language. It also lets you answer the question more precisely: a person even working in only two languages, JavaScript (client, 70%) and Python (server, 30%) who started using Clojure on the server as a replacement for his current usage of Python is a different kind of user than the person who started using ClojureScript on the client as a replacement for his current usage of JavaScript.
- aphyr 14y ago
  The idea of having a primary language honestly comes off to me as a sign that the developer hasn't spent much time programming yet: the real world has so many languages in it, and many times the practical choice is constrained by that of the platform or existing code to interoperate with. I've been writing code for ~18 years, ~10 professionally. I've programmed in (chronological order here) Modula-2, C, Basic, the HTML constellation, Perl, XSLT, Ruby, PHP, Java, Mathematica, Prolog, C++, Python, ML, Erlang, Haskell, Clojure, and Scala. I can state unambiguously that Clojure is my primary language: it is the most powerful, the most fun, and has the fewest tradeoffs. Like Haskell, I view Clojure as an apex language: the best confluence of software ideas towards a unified goal. Where Haskell excels at lazy, pure, strongly typed problems, Clojure is my first choice for dynamic, general-purpose programming. I wish it were faster, that it had a smarter compiler, that it had CPAN's breadth, that its error messages were less malevolent, that it had a strong type system for some problems. But for all this, you gain a fantastically expressive, concise, rich language built out of strikingly few ideas which lock together beautifully. It gives you a modern build system, a REPL, hot code reloading, hierarchies, parametric polymorphism, protocols, namespaces, immediate, lazy, logical, object-oriented, and functional modes, rich primitives, expressive syntax, immutable and mutable containers, many kinds of concurrency, thoughtful Java integration, hygenic and anaphoric macros, and homoiconicity. Were Clojure to cease, I would immediately endeavor to replicate its strengths in another language. That's a primary language to me. ;-)
MaxGabriel 14y ago
I wish Clojure could make itself more accessible to new programmers. For example, installing Leiningen: 1. Download the lein script 2. Place it on your $PATH (eg. ~/bin) 3. Set it to be executable. (chmod a+x ~/bin/lein) Step number one takes you text you need to copy and paste into a text editor, but what do you save the file as? A new programmer doesn't know what his/her $PATH is, and you can't simply cd ~/bin. And for the last step, you need to save the file as lein, which you might not have done.
- ibdknox 14y ago
  The goal is that with the next couple releases of the Light Table playground, you'll get the "I just double click this" kind of experience. You won't have to know what lein is, it'll be somewhat of an implementation detail.
- alexott 14y ago
  Lein already included into some Linux distros
ibdknox 14y ago
My hope is that we can do some really good things to help two of the biggest complaints here: Tooling and Documentation. On the tooling side, the next version of the Light Table Playground will be even more friendly than the previous one and seeks to make it a one click experience to go from nothing to a complete Clojure env. It's also getting tutorial content and a few other things that should make it far easier for people just starting out. In terms of the documentation and discovery problem, I think we just need to push documentation into the community's culture and I imagine the best way to do that would be to make tools that make beautiful documentation easy. We have codox for the generation of API docs, but nothing for longer form documentation and I haven't seen an environment that really embraces both the consumption and creation of docs - this is a problem I really want to see tackled in Light Table and I think there are some very cool potential solutions.
- cldwalker 14y ago
  Isn't marginalia, https://github.com/fogus/marginalia https://github.com/fogus/marginalia, one attempt at longer form docs? As for pushing documentation into the clojure culture, having on-demand online docs for any clojar or github repository would go a long way. We don't even have to reinvent the wheel as it's already been done in ruby, http://rubydoc.info/ http://rubydoc.info/ (source - https://github.com/lsegal/rubydoc.info https://github.com/lsegal/rubydoc.info).
  - fogus 14y ago
    > Isn't marginalia Marginalia was never intended as a system for writing longer form docs... but truth be told I don't know what "longer form doc" means. User manuals? In any case, Marginalia is trying to fill the "code-reading" space rather than the API and user-manual nitches. For the latter case, I've been experimenting with another tool.[1] [1]: http://www.github.com/fogus/trout http://www.github.com/fogus/trout
  - technomancy 14y ago
    > having on-demand online docs for any clojar or github repository would go a long way. How so? Isn't GitHub already its own on-demand online docs service? https://github.com/technomancy/leiningen/tree/master/doc https://github.com/technomancy/leiningen/tree/master/doc https://github.com/technomancy/clojure-mode/blob/master/doc/index.md https://github.com/technomancy/clojure-mode/blob/master/doc/...

125 points by mattdeboard 14y ago

mtrn 14y ago

Interestingly, Rob Pike mentioned in a recent talk, that most people come to Go from Ruby and Python (http://commandcenter.blogspot.de/2012/06/less-is-exponentially-more.html http://commandcenter.blogspot.de/2012/06/less-is-exponential...) and it seems to be a similar case with Clojure. And Python and Ruby are sure languages, people like to program in.

elarkin 14y ago
I suspect that Ruby and Python programmers are likely in a better position to switch than are programmers in other languages. For example, if you're in the CLR or the JVM already, there's a lot of reason not to move. Ruby and Python's relative obscurity might work to their benefit.
- mtrn 14y ago
  >For example, if you're in the CLR or the JVM already, there's a lot of reason not to move. Yes, it seems economic. After investing time in the larger and more enterprise-focused ecosystems, you'll probably have less incentives to try or move to something else. That's not implying, that Python and Ruby don't have great ecosystems themselves.
- duaneb 14y ago
  Ruby and Python programmers HAVE to be able to switch, otherwise they're unemployable. I can't think of any pure-python (or ruby) stack, and if you can't maintain your stack, you're going to have problems.
- joshuakarjala 14y ago
  I guess you could also somewhat argue, that programmers who have already potentially jumped (or diversified) from something that was more mainstream (PHP, Java, C# etc.) to Python/Ruby - are more prone to jump or at least try out new languages. Or more cynically they have a higher potential of being language hipsters :)
espeed 14y ago
Python and Ruby devs will probably continue to move to Clojure and Go for the concurrency models. The multicore reality is only going to become more relevant, and right now Clojure and Go have the most compelling concurrency stories.

Toshio 14y ago

Are there equivalent surveys for Haskell / Erlang / other functional languages? Why is Clojure the only community that does this?

nandemo 14y ago
State of Haskell, 2011: http://blog.johantibell.com/2011/08/results-from-state-of-haskell-2011.html http://blog.johantibell.com/2011/08/results-from-state-of-ha...
puredanger 14y ago
Because Chas is awesome? :)
dons 14y ago
Haskell community surveys and reports have been going on since the early 00s

raju 14y ago

There’s no data from previous years to compare this to, but whatever the curve of growth of Leiningen, technomancy & co. deserve a ton of credit for shaving the yaks and herding the cats to build it up into what it has become today. People’s everyday Clojure experience is greatly enhanced by the get-out-of-the-way approach taken by Leiningen, and I think we’re all better off for it. Yes, yes, a thousand times yes! Phil Hagelberg (a.k.a technomancy and a fellow HN'er) has done (along with many others) has done a great job of providing a great stack to start working with Clojure. From emacs-starter-kit to clojure-mode to smooth integration with leiningen, all Clojure enthusiasts and developers alike save so much in yak-shaving. Someday perhaps I will get a chance to say thank you in person, but allow me to start here - Great job guys, and thank you!

mej10 14y ago
I just want to second this. Especially with Leiningen, swank-clojure and clojure-mode, getting everything set up with emacs was extremely easy. It was exactly how it should be. Leiningen has "just-worked" for me from day one. Everything I have wanted to do has not only been possible, but very straightforward.
pbiggar 14y ago
It's also incredibly impressive that cake and lein were competing, and decided to join forces to bring the advantages of both to lein. We're not on lein2 yet, but it looks pretty compelling.

saurik 14y ago

> What language did you use just prior to adopting Clojure — or, if Clojure is not your primary language now, what is that primary language? This is just a silly question: almost every single day I am using all of bash, HTML, Python, Objective-C++, Java, C, C++, JavaScript, and SQL. This is required because I do work on a mobile application targeting iOS, Android, and "the browser" that has a server part and native components on the clients (using a mix of custom and off-the-shelf open-source codebases). So, what is my "primary language"? I'd simply argue I don't have one, and I haven't had one for a decade. The idea of having a primary language honestly comes off to me as a sign that the developer hasn't spent much time programming yet: the real world has so many languages in it, and many times the practical choice is constrained by that of the platform or existing code to interoperate with. The question about what language I used just prior to adopting Clojure is also not going to work very well: it was probably bash, as I used that language to download and setup Clojure. It may have been something like Haskell, as I might have been in an experimenting mood that day. It could have been any of the above "used" set (as I probably just had "learn Clojure" on my todo list right after something else random). The result of that version of the question doesn't really have meaning. A much better question might be, "for the tasks that you find yourself now using Clojure, what language do you now feel you are most using less often?" (although spending some more time on the poor "most/less" phrasing that I left in that might cause problems with non-English speakers). This question better handles people who are long past the idea that they primarily code in some specific language. It also lets you answer the question more precisely: a person even working in only two languages, JavaScript (client, 70%) and Python (server, 30%) who started using Clojure on the server as a replacement for his current usage of Python is a different kind of user than the person who started using ClojureScript on the client as a replacement for his current usage of JavaScript.

aphyr 14y ago
The idea of having a primary language honestly comes off to me as a sign that the developer hasn't spent much time programming yet: the real world has so many languages in it, and many times the practical choice is constrained by that of the platform or existing code to interoperate with. I've been writing code for ~18 years, ~10 professionally. I've programmed in (chronological order here) Modula-2, C, Basic, the HTML constellation, Perl, XSLT, Ruby, PHP, Java, Mathematica, Prolog, C++, Python, ML, Erlang, Haskell, Clojure, and Scala. I can state unambiguously that Clojure is my primary language: it is the most powerful, the most fun, and has the fewest tradeoffs. Like Haskell, I view Clojure as an apex language: the best confluence of software ideas towards a unified goal. Where Haskell excels at lazy, pure, strongly typed problems, Clojure is my first choice for dynamic, general-purpose programming. I wish it were faster, that it had a smarter compiler, that it had CPAN's breadth, that its error messages were less malevolent, that it had a strong type system for some problems. But for all this, you gain a fantastically expressive, concise, rich language built out of strikingly few ideas which lock together beautifully. It gives you a modern build system, a REPL, hot code reloading, hierarchies, parametric polymorphism, protocols, namespaces, immediate, lazy, logical, object-oriented, and functional modes, rich primitives, expressive syntax, immutable and mutable containers, many kinds of concurrency, thoughtful Java integration, hygenic and anaphoric macros, and homoiconicity. Were Clojure to cease, I would immediately endeavor to replicate its strengths in another language. That's a primary language to me. ;-)

MaxGabriel 14y ago

I wish Clojure could make itself more accessible to new programmers. For example, installing Leiningen: 1. Download the lein script 2. Place it on your $PATH (eg. ~/bin) 3. Set it to be executable. (chmod a+x ~/bin/lein) Step number one takes you text you need to copy and paste into a text editor, but what do you save the file as? A new programmer doesn't know what his/her $PATH is, and you can't simply cd ~/bin. And for the last step, you need to save the file as lein, which you might not have done.

ibdknox 14y ago
The goal is that with the next couple releases of the Light Table playground, you'll get the "I just double click this" kind of experience. You won't have to know what lein is, it'll be somewhat of an implementation detail.
alexott 14y ago
Lein already included into some Linux distros

ibdknox 14y ago

My hope is that we can do some really good things to help two of the biggest complaints here: Tooling and Documentation. On the tooling side, the next version of the Light Table Playground will be even more friendly than the previous one and seeks to make it a one click experience to go from nothing to a complete Clojure env. It's also getting tutorial content and a few other things that should make it far easier for people just starting out. In terms of the documentation and discovery problem, I think we just need to push documentation into the community's culture and I imagine the best way to do that would be to make tools that make beautiful documentation easy. We have codox for the generation of API docs, but nothing for longer form documentation and I haven't seen an environment that really embraces both the consumption and creation of docs - this is a problem I really want to see tackled in Light Table and I think there are some very cool potential solutions.

cldwalker 14y ago
Isn't marginalia, https://github.com/fogus/marginalia https://github.com/fogus/marginalia, one attempt at longer form docs? As for pushing documentation into the clojure culture, having on-demand online docs for any clojar or github repository would go a long way. We don't even have to reinvent the wheel as it's already been done in ruby, http://rubydoc.info/ http://rubydoc.info/ (source - https://github.com/lsegal/rubydoc.info https://github.com/lsegal/rubydoc.info).
- fogus 14y ago
  > Isn't marginalia Marginalia was never intended as a system for writing longer form docs... but truth be told I don't know what "longer form doc" means. User manuals? In any case, Marginalia is trying to fill the "code-reading" space rather than the API and user-manual nitches. For the latter case, I've been experimenting with another tool.[1] [1]: http://www.github.com/fogus/trout http://www.github.com/fogus/trout
- technomancy 14y ago
  > having on-demand online docs for any clojar or github repository would go a long way. How so? Isn't GitHub already its own on-demand online docs service? https://github.com/technomancy/leiningen/tree/master/doc https://github.com/technomancy/leiningen/tree/master/doc https://github.com/technomancy/clojure-mode/blob/master/doc/index.md https://github.com/technomancy/clojure-mode/blob/master/doc/...