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Comment by whalesalad | Hacker News Reader

Not sure why the excitement around ditching Lein when it looks like there is little or nothing to be gained at this time? The author describes a handful of other tools that are necessary to do things Lein does out of the box (uberjar)

The Clojure ecosystem (specifically through the lens of this post) reminds me of the Linux desktop ecosystem. Lots and lots of tweaks and knobs and dials for the sake of having tweaks and knobs and dials.

That’s my biggest gripe with Clj... there is hardly ever a “right way” to do things and usually a dozen esoteric approaches to organizing your application. It’s a blessing and a curse. All the rope to hang yourself with.

That being said I really like writing Clojure in the pure sense but have yet to see a really pleasant 1. App architecture and 2. Web application and routing layer. Ring/compojure don’t do it for me.

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It wasn't so much about ditching Lein as it was taking a clean-slate opportunity to learn and understand the new CLI tooling.

Nothing wrong with Lein at all!

Knobs and dials: this is true of every eco-system, wouldn't you say? Is 2018 the year of the linux desktop, finally? :-)

I agree that Clojure has a lot.

Right assumes a known context. Do what is right for you. Sometimes, that's Knob A, and sometimes that's Dial B. The fun is in figuring it out.

As a newcomer, I want sensible defaults. I want a Rails. Let me wait to learn the knobs and dials when I’ve got enough base knowledge to evaluate them fairly.

LuminusWeb is a great option for that. The generated code is simple to grasp and change as your knowledge grows.

http://www.luminusweb.net/

https://github.com/plexus/chestnut is Clojurescript, but it's fantastic. It's quite easy to roll out a UI and you can build your backend to your specifications. A bit less opinionated than Luminus, but both great for just getting started.

That being said I really like writing Clojure in the pure sense but have yet to see a really pleasant 1. App architecture and 2. Web application and routing layer. Ring/compojure don’t do it for me.

Aren't pretty much all languages the same in this area? expressjs/sinatra/flask, or are you implying you prefer opinionated frameworks like rails?

So I'm curious, what's a pleasant app architecture, web app/routing layer for you?

> Lots and lots of tweaks and knobs and dials

This is the case with all big-tent, "community-driven" PLs that have a high expressiveness, and attract contributors that have a multitude of preferences: Ruby, Javascript, Scala, Clojure, Haskell, Racket

Alternatively, are the 'prescriptive' cultures, that tend to select for predictability and high cohesion: C#, Elm, Go, Python (circa-2007).

It would be interesting to study the MBTI psyche types in each of the major language communities.

Would it be fair to say phrenological study of the same groups might be similarly interesting?

No.

It's interesting to see Ruby in there. The language definitely tries to cater to everyone's taste and offers a ton of ways to do the same thing. The community though seems a little more opinionated though. Everyone is set on bundler for example. There are really only two big testing frameworks that compete and the have very different goals etc.

@whalesalad, would you be willing to give me direct feedback on this project, as I go? I'd love to understand your pain points more fully!

Sure, my email is in my profile.

This probably doesn't really help you, but for "Web application and routing layer. Ring/compojure don’t do it for me.", I really love bidi and yada (both by juxt) as a very pleasant routing/web app layer. I also really love the re-frame app architecture, but its for clojurescript frontend only. So far, my backend needs have been very simple, but I would love for a re-frame-like system for backend too, that would be pretty nice IMHO.

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