4 ms·

Clojure is dying. But its heir - Jank might take the crown.

pseudony 1y ago
The thing about not having loads of syntax is that at some point, there is not much to do aside from polishing. I don't know why it would feel comforting to people that languages like python/c++/rust keep piling on syntax and features like the people in Rammstein's keine lust, who keep stuffing themselves in spite of their grotesque size. Haven't looked at jank, but given it looks like lisp, it would be the same thing. No news is actually good news in some cases
- lyu07282 1y ago
  > there is not much to do aside from polishing If only other languages could just have been designed perfectly first try like <insert your favourite irrelevant lisp dialect>...
  - pseudony 1y ago
    Right, and popularity is the ultimate determinant of value. Maybe you are simply ignorant of how many systems might actually run a lisp or similar "irrelevant" programming language in the systems you interact with. From airline reservation systems to banking and high-frequency trading. JavaScript is not, in fact, eating the world, and nor will Python, Rust or whatever else.
uludag 1y ago
> Clojure is dying is it really though? While I feel the hype is definitely not what it used to be, after getting back into Clojure after a few year hiatus I'm not noticing anything that would suggest it's dying. For example, there's still active Clojure podcasts still in production. Jank may very start exceeding Clojure in terms of hype though.
- askonomm 1y ago
  Clojure is very fragile though. Most Clojure companies are driven by vc funding and so whenever there's even a slight economic downturn, the few jobs that there are all disappear, sometimes mid-interview process, I've found out the hard way. But if you have tons of savings to justify a potentially half-year-or-more job search then no, not dying. But I wouldn't exactly say alive either, and the job market also hasn't grown in any noticeable way in the last half a decade.
- contrarian1234 1y ago
  [dead]
- KingMob 1y ago
  Clojure's stability means code will last awhile without breaking, but the ecosystem is shrinking. Less hype also means fewer jobs, fewer new libs, etc. It doesn't help that the last few releases have been pretty uninspiring.
shivekkhurana 1y ago
Jank is Clojure. Languages are often thought of in-coupling with the runtime. But Clojure is a way of writing code. The official implementation runs on JVM. There are community ports for Node, C#, Go. Jank is the port on CPP. Jank winning is Clojure winning.
90s_dev 1y ago
Never heard of Jank until now, very interesting. One of my lifelong dreams was to make my own language that compiles to assembly and is actually useful, even if only for small projects. Everyone seems to be doing that successfully lately with LLVM. I tried to learn x86 asm and failed so many times, there's little hope I'll be able to learn x64 asm well enough to generate code for it. Maybe I should just hop on the LLVM train.
LouDNL 1y ago
Clojure isn't dying, it's a niche language with a very much alive community. I admit that jobs are limited, but the ones that do exist are very interesting. My day job consists solely of programming in Clojure, so no, dead is not the correct word here.
jmaker 1y ago
How much of the existing ecosystem can be used via Jank? How much compatibility is there?

The thing about not having loads of syntax is that at some point, there is not much to do aside from polishing. I don't know why it would feel comforting to people that languages like python/c++/rust keep piling on syntax and features like the people in Rammstein's keine lust, who keep stuffing themselves in spite of their grotesque size. Haven't looked at jank, but given it looks like lisp, it would be the same thing. No news is actually good news in some cases

lyu07282 1y ago
> there is not much to do aside from polishing If only other languages could just have been designed perfectly first try like <insert your favourite irrelevant lisp dialect>...
- pseudony 1y ago
  Right, and popularity is the ultimate determinant of value. Maybe you are simply ignorant of how many systems might actually run a lisp or similar "irrelevant" programming language in the systems you interact with. From airline reservation systems to banking and high-frequency trading. JavaScript is not, in fact, eating the world, and nor will Python, Rust or whatever else.

uludag 1y ago

> Clojure is dying is it really though? While I feel the hype is definitely not what it used to be, after getting back into Clojure after a few year hiatus I'm not noticing anything that would suggest it's dying. For example, there's still active Clojure podcasts still in production. Jank may very start exceeding Clojure in terms of hype though.

askonomm 1y ago
Clojure is very fragile though. Most Clojure companies are driven by vc funding and so whenever there's even a slight economic downturn, the few jobs that there are all disappear, sometimes mid-interview process, I've found out the hard way. But if you have tons of savings to justify a potentially half-year-or-more job search then no, not dying. But I wouldn't exactly say alive either, and the job market also hasn't grown in any noticeable way in the last half a decade.
contrarian1234 1y ago
[dead]
KingMob 1y ago
Clojure's stability means code will last awhile without breaking, but the ecosystem is shrinking. Less hype also means fewer jobs, fewer new libs, etc. It doesn't help that the last few releases have been pretty uninspiring.

shivekkhurana 1y ago

Jank is Clojure. Languages are often thought of in-coupling with the runtime. But Clojure is a way of writing code. The official implementation runs on JVM. There are community ports for Node, C#, Go. Jank is the port on CPP. Jank winning is Clojure winning.

90s_dev 1y ago

Never heard of Jank until now, very interesting. One of my lifelong dreams was to make my own language that compiles to assembly and is actually useful, even if only for small projects. Everyone seems to be doing that successfully lately with LLVM. I tried to learn x86 asm and failed so many times, there's little hope I'll be able to learn x64 asm well enough to generate code for it. Maybe I should just hop on the LLVM train.

LouDNL 1y ago

Clojure isn't dying, it's a niche language with a very much alive community. I admit that jobs are limited, but the ones that do exist are very interesting. My day job consists solely of programming in Clojure, so no, dead is not the correct word here.

jmaker 1y ago

How much of the existing ecosystem can be used via Jank? How much compatibility is there?