3 ms·
As a former common lisper, I don't see the point. Clojure is better in pretty much every respect and incorporates many fresh ideas (such as excellent concurrenc
by jwr 12y ago
As a former common lisper, I don't see the point. Clojure is better in pretty much every respect and incorporates many fresh ideas (such as excellent concurrency support). Syntax is the least of CL's limitations. I didn't switch to Clojure because it was "easy" (quite the contrary).
And no, I do not miss reader macros. Perhaps more surprisingly, I don't miss CLOS at all, much as I always admired its design. It's just... Unnecessary.
What I do enjoy is STM, good performance, Java interop, ClojureScript, core.async and lots of excellent code with fresh ideas popping up all over the landscape.
- agentultra 12y agoClojure is nice and all but I wouldn't suggest it's even close to being better in many respects, let alone every respect. When I was working with it on a non-trivial project I despised the JVM stack traces, image-less environment, and lack of access to the reader. I assume that eventually Clojure will steal these ideas and adopt it in its own way... but these old, un-modern ideas of conditions and restarts, images, and reader macros are actually really useful. I hope they do take a hint.
- omaranto 12y agoI guess performance might still be a reason to prefer Common Lisp to Clojure.
- mcmancini 12y agoClojure lacks a formal spec, commercial vendor support, and doesn't have the long track record of CL. Clojure also requires JVM issues to be considered (e.g., which JVM will you use?). Don't know about C FFI with Clojure, but perhaps that's another CL advantage? For many, Clojure may be a better choice as you suggest: perhaps especially for web projects. But I think for some groups and applications, CL remains a better choice.