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Comment by va_coder | Hacker News Reader

Great presentation, but it got me thinking. Am I wasting my time trying to get software just right? Is it worth my time to learn Clojure or Haskell, when I don't even know what I'll use it for?

How many programmers do you know that are learning all kinds of languages and technologies and methodologies and other things to improve the quality of the software they write and yet will probably sit at a desk writing code for the next 30 years? As opposed to starting a business, getting financial free, etc.

Take the guy from Duck Duck Go. He wrote all of that in Perl; talk about easy, but not always so simple (to maintain). What if he spent his time learning Lisp and Monads instead of writing an app that lots of people use?

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To me, Clojure is about as productive as banging out a script in Ruby. It's way more productive than writing the same thing in any language where I can't (easily, or at all) just fire up a REPL and start hacking.

I can actually just crank out code that I use. It can be quick and messy. Clojure is not concerned with type theory and provable correctness.

But the end result of a quick hack, in Clojure, is often something (or is made of of parts) that can be applied to other problems by pulling it out into a library, or by abstracting one more argument to a function, etc..

I think someone like Gabriel Weinberg could get along just fine in Clojure, with much the same spirit as hacking Perl, but maybe with better results.

I kinda regret having chosen Clojure for my project. Its not that I can't express ideas in very little code, its just that my workflow is different from languages like Python.

In Clojure, it seems that I can't apply the method of spike solution (http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?SpikeSolution) and then refactor it into working code like I do with languages like Python or C.

I'm wondering what about spikes doesn't work in Clojure? I usually understand a spike as a "proof of concept" that doesn't handle all of the edge cases.

I'm curious why you feel you can't create spike solutions in Clojure?

Probably because pseudocode in my head is imperative.

I think that's normal. Part of learning Clojure is learning to think in another kind of pseudocode.

What does this imply about the languages you already know?

> Is it worth my time to learn Clojure or Haskell, when I don't even know what I'll use it for?

I don't know if it's a binary decision between investing a lot of of time, or investing none. You could skim the reference manual, and if anything jumps out at you, you have a topic for future investigation, or a non-zero quantity of information to base your decision to "is it worth more time?" on.

If you mean on a very abstract level, the balance between learning what others are doing and producing your own stuff, you might enjoy Richard's Hamming essay "You and your Research", pg hosts a copy on his site: http://www.paulgraham.com/hamming.html

I find I can't learn a language very well without having a real project to use it on anyway.

That's true.

I'm just thinking my time might better be spent thinking about business ideas, and then trying those ideas out on Heroku. As opposed to learning about some technology that may make me a better programmer but may not really help me get to where I want to be, which is having a successful product that I own equity in.

Is it really worth my time to learn the intricacies of functional programming? Am I still going to be writing code for some corporate overlord 5 or 10 years from now?

I fear you've missed the thrust of Rich's talk. Functional programming may seem "intricate" because it is unfamiliar, but if you're willing do do a little bit of up-front unlearning of the massively complex (but familiar) tools you're used to, you may find yourself able to work on projects of a much bigger scale and functionality.

See the slide at 17:20 -- easy stuff (perl,ruby, blurb) gives you 100% speed at the beginning of a project. If you don't expend effort into making things simple, you will "invariably slow down over the long haul."

    Am I still going to be writing code for some 
    corporate overlord 5 or 10 years from now?

Isn't that up to you?

Did you watch the video? He wasn't talking about tools and he wasn't talking about clojure. It was programming in general and if you have to ask if it's worth your time the obvious answer is no.

Yea I did, but I don't take what Rich says as gospel. I think for myself, not just about code but how I allocate my time.

> I think for myself

Then you should think that there may be others who aren't really that concerned about being their own boss and financial freedom(strange as it might sound); others who love learning new perspectives. Other than saying that clojure may not be worth your time, you offer no insight. Thanks for making your preference clear, now can we get back to discussing the talk?

"Am I wasting my time trying to get software just right?"

Don't we all want to "get software just right"?

"Is it worth my time to learn Clojure or Haskell, when I don't even know what I'll use it for?"

Reasonable question. Pick a project, choose a language. I introduced Scala where I work and it solved a problem but wasn't optimal for our team. Then I introduced Clojure and that's working better for us. Real world problem solutions will help you validate your choices (there was a great talk at The Strange Loop on real world Haskell usage at a startup, BTW).

"What if he spent his time learning Lisp and Monads instead of writing an app that lots of people use?"

Like Paul Graham? (Viaweb)

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