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> I'll have the draw of letting them work in the best tools, not making them compromise so it's easier for management to hire less serious programmers. Why are

• bretthoerner 13y ago
  It's not just about Clojure, but Clojure is one good signal. http://paulgraham.com/avg.html http://paulgraham.com/avg.html
• mattgreenrocks 13y ago
  "Less serious" programmers would rather argue that coupling doesn't exist on HN than sit down and study why people try to avoid it.
• michaelochurch 13y ago
  Why are developers who have not worked with Clojure "less serious" than those who have? In a typical Java shop or enterprise code factory, after 2-5 years you reach a plateau and the only way up is to become an "architect" or move into management. So that's what the better people in the mainstream Java world want to do, and ultimately the tenor is focused on "enterprise architecture" and Spring/Hibernate add-ons instead of making beautiful, powerful, or maintainable software and solving hard problems. The Clojure community (I'm at Clojure/West as we speak) is full of people who (a) are really good, like top 1%, and (b) have at least the intention to be career-long programmers (in some capacity). That's something you don't see in the Java shops. Yes, there are good programmers in them, but they usually are planning a move into management because the way most companies do software is limiting and puts you at an artificial ceiling after no more than 5 years. Is it a gross simplification to make this about languages? Perhaps, but the empowerment that languages like Clojure give to individual contributors can be a game changer. It's reminiscent of what startups used to be, before the VC-funded ecosystem became MBA Culture's west coast colony.
  • laureny 13y ago
    > The Clojure community (I'm at Clojure/West as we speak) is full of people who (a) are really good, like top 1% Says someone part of the Clojure community. How does it feel to be one of these top 1% developers? This kind of attitude is why the Lisp community has had a terrible reputation for five decades.
    • jeletonskelly 13y ago
      2 years in a clojure shop here, previous years spent in .NET shops. I wouldn't say it's not exclusively the top 1% of developers. It's that you are more likely to find those top developers in a community like that.
    • pchristensen 13y ago
      FWIW, I'm at Clojure/west too, I've met a disproportionate number of outstanding programmers, measured by both knowledge and productivity, and I definitely don't feel like I'm in the 1%. Claiming that a community you belong to is full of smart people doesn't mean you're claiming to be one of them.
    • RyanZAG 13y ago
      Agreed. Every group you speak to always thinks they are somehow the smartest people on earth. The funny part is they don't seem to realize that with every other group believing the same thing, maybe their subjective opinions aren't quite enough to gain them the title? But no, of course Clojure people are all the smartest programmers and are making all the biggest advancements in computer science.
    • DigitalJack 13y ago
      You completely read that into the post. At no point did the author include themselves in the one percent. They were commenting on that there are many programmers their that they consider one percenters in the clojure community. I think it says much more about you that you read that into the post, than it says about the lisp community. fwiw I only program as a hobby and while I think clojure is great to write in, it's a severe pain in the ass to figure out what the hell someone else was thinking when they wrote their code. The problem with clojure and all lisps, as I see it, is that they make it easy on the author, hard on the reader. It's so simple to create your own special DSL that everyone does it. Now i have to learn a thousand languages.