Idk ... it feels Clojure stalled since Nubank bought Hickeys company. Worst thing: spec is still in alpha !! I put so much on this ... but nothing really happened since ... idk 8 years?
Spec is still alpha and I’m not sure it will evolve more or if it’ll be something completely different. At least they’re not pushing you down the wrong path. Use/look at Malli instead of spec.
You can't just pass in a Clojure `fn` into a Java lambda function. You have to `reify` the interface and implement the single method. It's annoying and verbose and frustratingly the equivalent code is considerably cleaner in Java as a result.
I know that this is a product of how Java implemented lambdas by having interfaces with a single method, and I'm not saying that it would be trivial to add into Clojure, but I don't think it's impossible and I think people have been complaining about this for more than a decade now.
So while I love Clojure, it's probably my favorite language, I do get a little annoyed when people act like it's "stable" because there's nothing to fix.
I'm sure it's a difficult thing to implement, so I'm a little forgiving, but considering that Java interop is one of the biggest selling points for Clojure I do think it's fair to criticize a bad experience with it.
I need to play with the newer stuff though; the linked changes seem cool as hell.
No, but the release of spec single-handedly killed Schema, a more mature contract lib.
Then spec stagnated, because the core team didn't want to work on it, but as a core team library, nobody else can work on it, either.
Thus was born Malli, because people got tired of waiting.
I see the fact that there isn't much happening with the language as a positive myself. I want the core language to be small and stable. The big difference with Clojure and most languages is that it makes it far easier to implement new semantics in user space. It has a powerful macro system and new ideas can be expressed using libraries instead of having to be baked into the core language itself.
Most language grow through accretion as usage patterns change over time. New end up features end up getting bolted on to facilitate that, and the language keeps growing. The problem here is that the scope of things people have to know keeps growing as a result.
Meanwhile, Clojure managed to stay small and focused, while different kinds of ideas are expressed using libraries. When a new idea comes along people can just use a new library, and they don't have to learn about all the previous libraries that worked differently. I think this is a huge benefit from user perspective.
I mean, Datomic is free to use!
[core.async.flow]: https://github.com/clojure/core.async/commit/03b97e0b3e0ec32...
His comment walks you through what it's for. The basics: configure your flow of data from producer to queue to consumer and so on as data, in one place.