Another Word For It Patrick Durusau on Topic Maps and Semantic Diversity

November 24, 2014

Clojure is still not for geniuses

Filed under: Clojure,Functional Programming,Programming — Patrick Durusau @ 4:32 pm

Clojure is still not for geniuses (You — yes, you, dummy — could be productive in Clojure today.) by Adam Bard.

From the post:

The inspiration for the article I wrote last week entitled Clojure is not for geniuses was inspired by Tommy Hall‘s talk at Euroclojure 2014, wherein he made an offhand joke about preferring Clojure for its minimal syntax, as he possesses a small brain (both his blog and his head suggest this assertion is false). I had intended to bring this up with the original article, but got sidetracked talking about immutable things and never got back around to it. Here I’d like to address that, along with some discussion that arose in various forums after the first article.

This article is not about how Clojure is great. I mean, it is, but I’d like to focus on the points that make it an accessible and practical language, without any faffing about with homoiconicity and macros and DSLs and all that.

Today’s all about illustrating some more ways in which I believe our good comrade Clojure can appeal to and empower the proletariat in ways that certain other languages can’t, through the power of simplicity.

This is a great post but I would like to add something to:

So why isn’t everyone using it?

That’s the big question. Clojure has grown immensely in popularity, but it’s still not a household name. There are a lot of reasons for that – mainstreamn languages have been around a lot longer, naturally, and obviously people are still producing software in them.

That’s not a big question. Think about the years people have invested in C, COBOL, Fortran, C++ and ask yourself: Do I prefer programming where I am comfortable or do I prefer something new and not familiar. Be honest now.

The other thing to consider is the ongoing investment in programs written in C/C++, COBOL, etc. Funders don’t find risk of transition all that attractive, even if a new language has “cool” features. They are interested in results, not how you got them.

The universe of programs needs to expand to create space for Clojure to gain marketshare. The demand for concurrency is a distinct possibility. The old software markets will remain glutted with C/C++, etc., for the foreseeable future. But that’s ok, older programmers need something to fall back on.

Pressing forward on Clojure’s strengths, such as simplicity and concurrency and producing results that other current languages can’t match is the best way to increase Clojure’s share of an expanding market. (Or to put it in the negative, who wants to worry about a non-concurrent and slowly dying market?)

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