Hacker News Reader

Comment by linotype | Hacker News Reader

Separate question: are there any new startups out there writing code primarily in Clojure?

Yes, in fact there is also a good number of conferences, for instance in less than two days https://2024.heartofclojure.eu/ starts in Belgium for instance (meet me there ;-) ).

We are writing a trading system for a small broker company in Clojure/ ClojureScript with a Datomic centered backend. The previous company some of us on the team worked at had the code-base also in Clojure/ ClojureScript.

How is the job market for juniors? Functional programming jobs seems to be anti-juniors when hiring.

Hard to say, I was always contacted directly by the team/ had other role and later it turned out I can do a fair bit of programming too ;-)

Sadly Common Lisp, Scheme, Clojure, Julia, OCaml, F# and Haskell jobs are quite scarce.

For example, right now, I can only see ~50 LinkedIn EU Clojure ads. A dozen more mention Clojure but it does not seem to be the main focus of the job.

Would love to be proven wrong, though. Perhaps these jobs are sometimes not advertised via LinkedIn.

I would love for my next job to be in Common Lisp.

I do have a concern though. I see that at lots of companies the job is not a Go job or a Python job or a Javascript job, but a Go-at-Foocorp job or a Python-at-Bazco job or a Javascript-at-International-Clowns-Inc. job. What I mean is that the team have built so many leaky abstractions atop the core language, and added so many third-party tools, that the learning curve is steep and the skills non-transferable. On the one hand, who cares? We’re human, we can learn. But on the other it means that it can take significantly longer to ramp up and start delivering value than one would prefer.

What’s this have to do with Lisp? Well, while a well-written Lisp system will be faster to pick up and get started on that one in a less-powerful language (i.e., almost all of them), a poorly-written mess will be much, much slower. My concern is that I might leave a pretty good situation for what ends up being a dumpster fire — and then have to find a new job too quickly.

That's so true, you can write Fortran in any language! I've seen great Java codebases and atrocious Clojure out there.

Developing good non-over-engineered abstractions is hard. But with Lisp it's a bit easier.

Some places do abuse macro DSLs and you can end up, as you said, working on a local language with no transferable skills.

I'd say that market exists, but is kinda invisible.

I've been looking around for a junior with a passion for Common Lisp, but I have _no_ idea where to find one, especially in Germany (job's remote, but I'm currently not able to hire FTEs outside the country).

That's like asking about the job market for hammers.

(I'm one of the founders of Latacora and reviewed the post.) If any of you are at Heart of Clojure, I'll be there both wearing my Latacora hat and my Clojurists Together hat :)

Missed your reply but we've met anyway... so all is good. Thank you for attending and sponsoring.

Btw. there is a new video from the Heart of Clojure Hallway track: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEqzw6V31tk I think it really captures the great atmosphere in the community and some community leaders.

The annual Clojure/conj conference is coming up next month in Alexandria, VA (https://2024.clojure-conj.org) and there will be talks from a variety of companies, both big and small.

InstantDB (YC S22) launched a few weeks ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41322281

I don't know about startups, but I know of several more mature companies that are using it. It's, IMO, the best way to use the Java ecosystem.

Even if you never push the code to production, it’s a crazy gorse multiplier for the explore and adventure prototype phase of a project

"gorse multiplier" wins today's "best transcription error" award, IMO

category: edit-distance-two

I was momentarily convinced that “crazy horse multiplier” must be an American idiom, and then realized that maybe the misspelled thing being multiplied is a force rather than a horse after all.

I usually catch these too and ninja edit them out

2nd place probably goes to another comment in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41560711

We (https://basil.net) are not new and not a startup, but our main language is Clojure and each new project is written in it. Very satisfied with our choice.

Yup, it's still the best tool for me. Especially for complex domains, as it does not allow you to over-abstract data structures.

Schemamap.io has a declarative SQL compiler and backend implemented in it, solving Postgres database syncing.

I use it for Wobaka[1]. It's 98% Clojure and ClojureScript with some bash added. I even use it for CSS with a beautiful library called Garden.

Extremely happy going with Clojure!

[1] https://wobaka.com/blog/building-a-startup-on-clojure/

There are quite a few! We do at Doccla (and we’re hiring :) (EU))

> EU

Anything for juniors?

Not at the moment, sorry!

havent touched clojure in years, but i use FP daily, can i get an interview? :)

I’ve sent you an email!

Definitely. It's a great tool, especially in a small and smart team.

Nalca Biotech

Reply on news.ycombinator.com