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Comment by llambda | Hacker News Reader

Interesting. What language do you think is the right language, if I may be so bold? :)

I think clojure is close in some regards, but running on the JVM really hurts me these days (startup time really hurts TDD as I do it). I also think clojure has too much syntax (for a lisp), and am not convinced modern programs should be written in lisp any more (though that's hazy).

At the moment I use Ruby, which is much less frustrating than clojure ever was. (I seriously love the shit out of rspec).

Last but not least: stacktraces.

This isn't to say I think Ruby is better for all tasks etc, just that it fits where I am right now. Clojure is probably better for people with differing tastes to me.

>> and am not convinced modern programs should be written in lisp any more (though that's hazy).

Can you elaborate or recommend me some reading that support this point?

Like I said, I'm hazy on that point, and don't want to say anything further in public right now.

Did you do Ruby prior to Clojure? It's interesting to see you making the jump to Ruby right as I'm heading down the opposite direction on the Polyglot Interstate.

I jumped on the Ruby ride in mid-2007 and the libraries lacked polish; Rails had performance issues, RSpec its hiccups, and Cucumber was quite a frustrating experience, yet there seemed to be so much potential there that I staid on.

Now Clojure seems to be going through similar evolution. Libraries and frameworks like Enlive, Pinot, and core.logic display immense promise but the full stack feels still a bit wobbly.

But it is as you say; different situations and people need different tools. I still do most of my web dev client work with Ruby but I'm itching to try out Clojure for more complex data processing and, when the libraries mature, full-stack web development.

EDIT: Oh, and I'm with you on the stack traces... Good thing there's an update due in Clojure 1.4.

I picked up Ruby just after I picked up Clojure (and well after I picked up lisp in general). I still dislike the ruby community's lack of maturity, but seem to be coping better with it these days. #lolbundler & rvm are still terrible compared to lein though, which often frustrates me a lot.

I use Ruby a lot and love it! But one should be fair and take into account that it has had much more time maturing. From what I can tell, it is plateauing right now. On a high level admittedly.

Instead of concluding that Clojure is not the right language, I'd rather say it is a niche language right now. With great potential to become an awesome mainstream, general purpose technology long-term. After all, it has some features and applications that Ruby will never get.

But is it fair at all to compare two languages with a different paradigm?

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