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That's true to some degree, but for well-written code, I don't think it's necessarily as severe as that description makes it sound. Any Ruby on Rails codebase i

by chc 14y ago

That's true to some degree, but for well-written code, I don't think it's necessarily as severe as that description makes it sound. Any Ruby on Rails codebase is also chock-full of pseudo-DSLs (controllers, scopes, formats, etc.), but you don't hear the same complaints about Rails code being unreadable very often. It's possible to go overboard and turn your codebase into the Clojure equivalent of Negaposi, but from my (somewhat limited) experience, it's not exactly endemic.

weareconvo 14y ago
> That's true to some degree, but for well-written code... This is sounding painfully close to No True Scotsman argument. Also, for the number of times I've heard Clojure programmers say this, you'd think I would have at least ONCE been shown some of the programmer's actual code, in an effort to provide a concrete example of how elegant Clojure is.
- chc 14y ago
  > This is sounding painfully close to No True Scotsman argument. Well, excuse me for trying not to make over-broad claims. Would you like me to go find some Negaposi to prove that other people's Ruby code is unreadable? The thing about "No True Scotsman" that makes it bad is that it makes a categorical claim, but it defines the category in an arbitrary way. I'm not really making a categorical claim — I'm just saying that, much like any other language, Clojure authors can write readable or unreadable code. Clojure gives you slightly more powerful tools, but overly "clever" use of the tools available in Ruby can produce unreadable code just as well. > Also, for the number of times I've heard Clojure programmers say this, you'd think I would have at least ONCE been shown some of the programmer's actual code, in an effort to provide a concrete example of how elegant Clojure is. Take a look at any of the more popular Clojure projects (https://github.com/languages/clojure https://github.com/languages/clojure is a good place to start). I find that they tend to be fairly readable.

by chc 14y ago

weareconvo 14y ago

> That's true to some degree, but for well-written code... This is sounding painfully close to No True Scotsman argument. Also, for the number of times I've heard Clojure programmers say this, you'd think I would have at least ONCE been shown some of the programmer's actual code, in an effort to provide a concrete example of how elegant Clojure is.

chc 14y ago
> This is sounding painfully close to No True Scotsman argument. Well, excuse me for trying not to make over-broad claims. Would you like me to go find some Negaposi to prove that other people's Ruby code is unreadable? The thing about "No True Scotsman" that makes it bad is that it makes a categorical claim, but it defines the category in an arbitrary way. I'm not really making a categorical claim — I'm just saying that, much like any other language, Clojure authors can write readable or unreadable code. Clojure gives you slightly more powerful tools, but overly "clever" use of the tools available in Ruby can produce unreadable code just as well. > Also, for the number of times I've heard Clojure programmers say this, you'd think I would have at least ONCE been shown some of the programmer's actual code, in an effort to provide a concrete example of how elegant Clojure is. Take a look at any of the more popular Clojure projects (https://github.com/languages/clojure https://github.com/languages/clojure is a good place to start). I find that they tend to be fairly readable.