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Comment by moomin | Hacker News Reader

Speaking as someone who writes ClojureScript themselves, ClojureScript is definitely in the category of technologies that show no sign of explosion whatsoever.

React and Vue are both great technologies, but with Teact the template syntax is optional, and no lisp user wants another syntax...

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I picked up ClojureScript at the end of 2013. I was a C++ developer then in a small firm and was tasked to write a web frontend. Outsourcing that project had failed before (2 times iirc), so my boss bet on me to do it. I knew HTML and had written probably < 1000 lines of Javascript code in my life before. Anyway, I needed to write an interactive single page app (basically it was a visualization of simulation results), so I needed Javascript. But it was so frustrating to write Javascript (also, tooling was mediocre back then or I didn't know it). So at the same time, I stumbled over ClojureScript and had a try (I new Scheme before and was especially outraged by JS syntax quirks, so I hoped S-expressions would rescue me). With ClojureScript in 2013 I had a module system that handled dependencies, an emerging library ecosystem that had what I needed for that specific case, I was pretty happy. This was more advanced than what I got with JS (I might not have found the viable options for such stuff with JS, but at least information on them wasn't widely found then).

Last year I had another look at ClojureScript and it felt like a ghost town. This saddens me. There are a few inspiring talks now and then, but nothing I found worth using in a project.

I'm really surprised by this assessment. I've been working with ClojureScript for the past three years, and I find the ecosystem is very vibrant. ClojureScript itself has been evolving rapidly. Lately there's been a lot of focus on Js ecosystem integration allowing you to do things such as consuming NPM modules directly. The compiler itself is very efficient doing things like dead code elimination and minification out of the box.

In terms of libraries, I haven't found anything that comes close to reagent/re-frame for building complex UIs.

Meanwhile, hot code reloading with Figwheel works beautifully, and you have a REPL for running code in the browser straight from the editor.

My team is very happy with the results of building ClojureScript based applications. I'd be curious to hear why you feel that there's nothing that's worth putting in a project.

Not sure about the inspiring talks or whatnot, but I've been writing clojure/clojurescript (reagent, re-frame et al.) professionally for a couple of years and there's nothing I can't find that I need in a project. With simple js interoperability, native use of js/react components in reagent and ease of wrapping any vanilla js library, there really is nothing you can't do with clojurescript. You should take a closer look!

I really enjoy ClojureScript, and haven't found it to be a ghost town at all. Reagent and re-frame + Figwheel are a killer combo. ClojureScript's JS interop is stellar.

I guess compared to the frantic pace of the JS ecosystem, the ClojureScript ecosystem does feel tiny and slow-paced. But I don't mind that.

I also find the ClojureScript ecosystem vibrant and growing

1) I didn't say that, I said good ideas trickle from research ecosystems to industry ecosystems, because legacy

2) Ruby (1995) showed no signs of explosion whatsoever, first rails had to come out (2005), and then industry had to realize that it was a good idea (Rails 3 is the first version I ever used, that was in 2009?). So that's 10-14 years. ClojureScript is 6. Give it a chance!

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