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>The good news is, you don't have to be part of the problem. There is hardly any reason to use the "popular" languages. They don't have better platform support,

by lg 17y ago

>The good news is, you don't have to be part of the problem. There is hardly any reason to use the "popular" languages. They don't have better platform support, they don't have better libraries, and they don't have better tools. So don't worry about them, they are for other people :) This is why I'm not interested in Clojure, regardless of how nice a lisp it may be. Java libraries are poorly-designed, the prospect of wrestling with them again brings back memories of frustration. And you can bet that no one will ever write better ones, because the community will discourage people from "duplicating functionality."

jrockway 17y ago
My thoughts exactly. It is easier to just steal Clojure's good features for CL. (funcallable everything is kind of nice.)
weavejester 17y ago
So your criticism of Clojure is based upon unfounded assumptions about what the community will do in future? Maybe you should look at what libraries are being created before you leap to conclusions? There are many Clojure libraries that attempt to reimplement existing Java libraries. For instance, Ring is a HTTP specification for Clojure that reimplements much of the functionality of Java servlets.
jimbokun 17y ago
"Java libraries are poorly-designed, the prospect of wrestling with them again brings back memories of frustration." One of the best things about Clojure is how it makes Java libraries suck much less. For example, line-seq turns a Java BufferedReader into a lazy sequence of String's, one for each line in the file. http://clojure.org/api#toc334 http://clojure.org/api#toc334 You still have the suckiness of the multiple lines it takes to instantiate and clean up the BufferedReader, but macros like with-open makes that suck a little bit less, too. http://clojure.org/api#toc612 http://clojure.org/api#toc612 Stir in some macro-fu of your own, and now you have the benefits of Java libraries minus the boilerplate suckiness. Basically, it turns Java into a "your language features are my libraries" language, no mean feat.

by lg 17y ago

jrockway 17y ago

My thoughts exactly. It is easier to just steal Clojure's good features for CL. (funcallable everything is kind of nice.)

weavejester 17y ago

So your criticism of Clojure is based upon unfounded assumptions about what the community will do in future? Maybe you should look at what libraries are being created before you leap to conclusions? There are many Clojure libraries that attempt to reimplement existing Java libraries. For instance, Ring is a HTTP specification for Clojure that reimplements much of the functionality of Java servlets.

jimbokun 17y ago

"Java libraries are poorly-designed, the prospect of wrestling with them again brings back memories of frustration." One of the best things about Clojure is how it makes Java libraries suck much less. For example, line-seq turns a Java BufferedReader into a lazy sequence of String's, one for each line in the file. http://clojure.org/api#toc334 http://clojure.org/api#toc334 You still have the suckiness of the multiple lines it takes to instantiate and clean up the BufferedReader, but macros like with-open makes that suck a little bit less, too. http://clojure.org/api#toc612 http://clojure.org/api#toc612 Stir in some macro-fu of your own, and now you have the benefits of Java libraries minus the boilerplate suckiness. Basically, it turns Java into a "your language features are my libraries" language, no mean feat.