Clojure is one of the better dynamic languages.
The rub however is that GHC can check the consistency of my software faster than I or my colleagues will ever be able to, and programmer time is expensive.
So that's why not Clojure.
The rub however is that GHC can check the consistency of my software faster than I or my colleagues will ever be able to, and programmer time is expensive.
So that's why not Clojure.
That's why you need to spend 3 years learning Haskell? I feel that's the right amount of years for an average Joe programmer to reach meaningful productivity with the language. Well, maybe I'm exaggerating, maybe it's just two years. Plus/minus another year to learn and understand compiler pragmas.
I’m not sure how that’s a rebuttal to my point though.
I run a startup. I’ve already put the time in to learn the technology. I’ve learned other technologies too. This one happens to be the one I find the cheapest (now) to write. Did it take my employees a long time to learn Haskell? Maybe! But I didn’t pay for that. They learned the technology for whatever reason, and I’m seeing far better returns on my investment than I think I would have if I hired a bunch of Clojure developers. My previous full-time gig was at a Clojure startup. Their pace is pretty atrocious compared to the pace of my current team.
But your simple dismissal of Clojure (even though seem to be an educated one) has no merits. Don't feel bitter because Clojure is growing in popularity (in relative terms) and Haskell seems stagnated. Haskell is an older language and has had its ups and downs, and I think it will be fine. Clojure as well - no matter how aggressively haskellers would evangelize against it, it will continue to grow steadily. Think of it as a gateway drug into Haskell. I know people who jumped that way, and I know people who went the other way - from Haskell to Clojure.
To me, it is like using headphones - some prefer wired ones, some people enjoy wireless, even though audio quality suffers, wireless gives them a lot of freedom and might be viewed as a "more practical choice." To that though, proponents of wired might say: "what if the battery dies?". It is an endless and quite pointless debate. So let's concur: Haskell is great, and Clojure is fantastic too.
I believe it has an impact on my business' bottom-line. Saving money in business is a merit.
> Don't feel bitter because Clojure is growing in popularity and Haskell seems stagnated.
That… was an odd take. I'm not sure what gave you the impression that I would be bitter about Clojure growing in popularity (not that I think it is, anyway). I have nothing invested in Clojure not being a popular language, and the idea that Haskell has stagnated is a little hilarious.
> Haskell is great, and Clojure is fantastic too.
Again, I have never denied Clojure's merits. My position is pretty simple — I have found it cheaper to build Internet software businesses with Haskell than with Clojure.
At least for OCaml/ReasonML it was "less than a week" for me and Haskell is probably not that much harder than another ML.
For one thing, Clojure has type analysis: spec. Also, as pointed out in the article, you can also write tests.
+----------+-------+-------+
| Language | Tests | Types |
+----------+-------+-------+
| Haskell | Yes | Yes |
| Clojure | Yes | No |
+----------+-------+-------+This is also made obvious by the idiomatic use of each technology.
So, no. My little chart is correct.
I understand the idealist world view is seductive — we'll be discipined, we'll write the tests, we'll make good use of Spec, etc etc.
In reality, I have never seen this happen. Humans are lazy and undisciplined, so that's what I optimise for.
It’s not a type system, but it’s very concise and easy to add validations to important functions. This removes the “lazy and undisciplined” part of the equation.
I agree.
But we do use spec very successfully for complex data structure validations and example data generation.