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As a former Clojure dev (now just using Clojure in my spare time) I love Babashka. Michiel Borkent really nailed it with sci (Small Clojure Interpreter) and Bab
by snorremd 3mo ago
As a former Clojure dev (now just using Clojure in my spare time) I love Babashka. Michiel Borkent really nailed it with sci (Small Clojure Interpreter) and Babashka. Running a custom Clojure interpreter in a GraalVM compiled Clojure app is quite clever.
Now there are of course limitations to what you can do in terms of not supporting Java reflection or the full Clojure compiler. But I've made some nifty small scripts and convenience helpers with it. And the dev experience of making these scripts is so much nicer than trying to write bash scripts. The Clojure edn syntax is super simple, and the REPL connected editor let me rapidly test parts of the code just like with full Clojure apps.
I don't have experience with other lisps, but I can vouch for Clojure being very nice. The community was welcoming and friendly to newcomers when I started learning, I hope it still is. One thing I love about the Clojure ecosystem and community is the effort taken to never break libraries. I've looked at libraries I used some ten years ago, and the API is still compatible with code I wrote back then. There is very little churn. Maybe this is because the language is largely untyped and editors only partially check "types". Having breakages in libraries you consume once every couple of months would get really tiring in Clojure land. I'd imagine the same problems would present themselves in Common Lisp and others.
- pjmlp 3mo agoI love the Clojure community, it is the only one that usually talks about the host platform in a symbiotic way, not as if they would be rewriting everything into their favourite language, like in most guest languages communities.
- zem 3mo agopeople don't usually think of C as a host platform, but the python community has a similarly symbiotic relationship with C extensions.
- erichocean 3mo agoSince Java 25/Project Panama, I have that kind of relationship with C from Clojure as well. Codex can one shot the bindings flawlessly, and the interface is significantly faster for downcalls vs. JNI.
- pjmlp 3mo agoHence why it is such a sad story with JIT compilers in Python.