Comment by jakebasile | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jakebasile | Hacker News Reader

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Some experienced devs might say the same thing if they've also found a language that just clicks with them as I have.

Clojure is a locus of things I really, really like and I have no reason to change despite the recent FUD around it. Namely: Lispiness, dynamic typing, functional programing, immutability, lean pragmatic design, and it runs on the JVM. I haven't seen anything that compares to it in these regards that also has the community support that Clojure has (great projects like Leiningen, Lacinia, and so on).

I've tried Haskell but felt I was fighting the compiler due to the static typing (I hate static typing). It also felt like it was designed for eggheads and not people like me just doing a job. Scala feels like it doesn't know what it wants to be when it grows up. Elixir and Erlang are neat but I haven't had a chance to really try them out, but Elixir's choice to emulate Ruby-like syntax is unfortunate.

That said, I do have a high degree of proficiency with Python, which shares dynamic typing and kinda-functional programming with Clojure. Python was my language of choice for years before I finally gave Clojure a try, and I haven't really looked back. The poor handling of the Python 3 switch really soured me to Python.

I also did a good chunk of Go, but the static typing and syntax weirdness just killed it for me. Amusingly, Go seems to have a similar "ivory tower" approach to language design to Clojure - which indicates that type of management isn't really a problem for me.

My question for you would be, why Clojure over, say, Racket? Is it just the JVM?

I personally prefer Racket because of the ease with which you can use it to hack on itself. Macros are no stranger to LISPs, but Racket goes beyond by having the entire system around it built to accommodate language design and modification.

Want to use dynamic typing? Just use #lang racket. Want to use static type checking? Use #lang typed/racket. Reactive programming is there with #lang frtime. And that's before we even consider things like Scribble.

As an aside, I totally agree with you on Elixir. Erlang is wonderful for what it's built for. Elixir's choice to use Ruby syntax, however, ruins Elixir for me -- and it's not because I hate Ruby. I actually like Ruby a fair deal. Instead, it's because using Ruby syntax makes it more difficult (for me) to truly and fully think in the paradigm. Erlang/Elixir are nothing like Ruby. Making the syntax Ruby-like just obfuscates what's actually going on in the system. (I find similar issues whenever I try to program using imperative chunks in, say, F# or Scala.) Just my two cents.

The answer is just that I haven't gotten around to trying Racket. I've eyed it now and then but I've never done anything serious with it. It does seem to be the closest match for me barring Clojure.

That said, the JVM is a huge part of why I like Clojure. Because of the mountains of corporate code written in Java there is an insane amount of pretty high quality (if extremely object oriented) code available for it. I can find a library for basically any third party tool I'd want to use and if someone hasn't written a Clojure wrapper for it yet I can whip one up pretty quickly most of the time.

And sometimes I can do fine with no wrapper at all. Not only there's a lot of JVM code available, but interfacing with it is pretty quick, straightforward and smooth compared to wrapping C (or, god forbid, C++) from any Scheme I tried. I found that's very important. You can have lots of code theoretically available for wrapping, but there's more of an impedance mismatch between C and Scheme (think continuations/TCO, garbage collection, type conversion, and the fact that some tools in Racket/Scheme ecosystems will be blind to what happens in C land) so in practice it's a lot more work.

I don't think Racket includes the immutable data types that Clojure does?

I don't know what exactly Clojure has but Racket/base has immutable lists, vectors, hash maps, and structs. (As well as mutable versions). Most default data structures are immutable.

Besides the JVM part, this is my take on it: as a language, Racket defines a vast possibility space, which is a superset of that defined with Clojure. You could implement Clojure (barring the JVM) quite naturally in Racket, while the other way around would be impractical. Now, Clojure is a pretty sweet spot in that design space, and someone else has done the immense work to carve it out, define it, implement it, and foster a sizable community around it.

Do you have any resources to start with Racket? I did it in first year but I haven't really seen (or searched too hard for!) materials that explain how I'd use it in production.

This book was nice, and the author is earnestly trying to build a commercial-usage community around Racket:

https://serverracket.com/

EDIT: Oh, but just getting started:

- How to Design Programs 2nd edition (new to programming or structured reasoning about programs)

- Racket Guide (new to Racket)

- Racket Docs (for reference)

The docs are pretty great, but IMO there’s an opportunity for people to blog about production use cases.

Also, I dream of something like R’s tidyverse being written for Racket... maybe by me, but ideally by someone smarter and better.

I've luckily read HtDP already for school. :)

I'll check out serverracket!

I played around with Erlang back when people rediscovered it the last go around in ~2006, and I didn’t think the syntax was crazy, so I’ve never gotten too excited to learn Elixir. Lisp Flavored Erlang (LFE) on the other hand looked cool.

But Racket... oh, Racket. Every time I get to write Racket, I feel like it’s the past, present, and future.

I do like some of the immutable collection abstractions in Clojure, and I like that there’s always a library in Java that’ll allow me to mostly still write Clojure. But Racket is definitely my language sweet spot.

Regarding Haskell, the type system is really the main feature of the language, not the paradigm. Haskell allows you to program in the type system (using some popular extensions) and simply derive all your code from your types. I highly recommend Type Driven Development with Idris as an intro the absolutely crazy things you can do with a powerful type system.

The issue with dynamically typed FP is that FP is essentially about functions as mathematical objects, and there's really nothing mathematical about dynamic typing. Primarily, static types act as a proof, and because we're talking functions in the mathematical sense, you can actually reason about your program in the normal way.

Haskell is for eggheads though. What I really like is Rust, which feels like you're using Haskell and C at the same time. It's both powerfully low level and powerfully high level, and extremely pragmatic.

All that said, it sounds like you're super passionate about clojure, and I hope no one rips it out of your hands. I know what it's like to play the language wars games, and I wish you and all our fellow brethren the best of luck.

"Elixir and Erlang are neat but I haven't had a chance to really try them out, but Elixir's choice to emulate Ruby-like syntax is unfortunate."

Of the languages you mention, Elixir seems to me like the closest experience to Clojure. Of this list:

"Lispiness, dynamic typing, functional programing, immutability, lean pragmatic design, and it runs on the JVM."

Only missing "Lispiness" and "runs on the JVM".

As for "Ruby-like" syntax, this sounds like people not trying Lisp because "too many parentheses".

I've definitely had my eye on Elixir for a while, just haven't had a need or a real itch to try it yet.

It'd be hard to give up my precious parentheses though.

One of the authors of erlang also invented lisp flavored erlang, (LSP) and it's just as good as regular erlang.

LFE (I think you were the victim of autocorrect):

"It'd be hard to give up my precious parentheses though."

Yeah, that's the "Lispiness".

Elixir does have macros, but I still don't think any macro system is as powerful or user friendly without S-expressions.

It's kind of the last step of a language becoming just another Lisp.

Interesting. I asked mostly because I've hopped around a lot, trying to find that one language that just clicks with the way my brain works. Java, Javascript, Go, Scala, Ruby, Rust, Python...they all had things about them that kinda clashed with the way I intuited problems and attempted to solve them. I've instead tried to rescope my thinking into "I'm the problem, I should try to follow the language's idioms to find solutions."

Of the languages that I've enjoyed, I've spent the most time in Go. I've kind of just hitched my wagon to it, regardless of whether I like it or not.

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