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Comment by pelle | Hacker News Reader

We use ClojureScript (and Clojure) at http://economi.co and I'm really enjoying it.

Maybe one of the most difficult things coming into it is trying to relate it to something like BackBone.

However generally speaking in Clojure the culture is more about libraries than frameworks.

C2 http://keminglabs.com/c2/ which on the outset looks just like a ClojureScript version of d3 is actually a great library to use instead of a traditional front end framework.

Check the example implementation of the class TodoMVC list here: https://github.com/lynaghk/todoFRP/tree/master/todo/c2

It's uses normal Clojure data structures within atoms as the data model (https://github.com/lynaghk/todoFRP/blob/master/todo/c2/src/c...) and uses C2 to automatically update the UI (https://github.com/lynaghk/todoFRP/blob/master/todo/c2/src/c...). Very elegant.

I'm just starting to explore this area myself, but have already found it useful for a few smaller parts of our site.

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Don't worry about how anything compares to frameworks, because they don't matter anymore.

We think traditional frontend frameworks - whether of the rails/django variety or the backbone variety, are generally rubbish in a nearly infinite number of ways. It's a style of programming based on wrapping weak mutation oriented idioms behind monolithic APIs and design patterns. We think default functional style and fine grained composability is the future, and mutation + oo design patterns + frameworks is the past.

I'm new to programming and I want to start off on the right foot. I'd love to learn more about the differences. Where should I look?

We did a post a while back on the frameworks vs. libraries and our overall take on software engineering:http://blog.getprismatic.com/blog/2012/4/5/software-engineer...

Thank you!

It may be the future for very skilled developers that have already familiarised themselves with frameworks and design patterns and are capable of moving past them. The majority of software developers benefit enormously from the conventions encouraged in a framework like Rails. If Clojure is going to be adopted widely (if that is a goal of the project at all), the community needs to work on better communicating best practices to make up for the lack of framework 'guidance'.

Eh, even the least charitable would have to admit that frameworks enforce style. On a large project, this matters hugely. I don't care how good your devs are they DO have different opinions re: style.

I disagree -- frameworks enforce structure (especially of callbacks), not code style.

Unity of code style is something you can solve with standards, style guides, pairing with new developers, and following conventions from surrounding code.

Clojure is nice because the community, while having different opinions about how often you should use X technique vs Y, generally has core sensibilities about what makes for good, simple code that composes well and doesn't tangle concerns. (This is largely due to the influence of Rich Hickey.) This (and not "perfectly uniform code style") makes for an effective large team.

> generally rubbish in a nearly infinite number of ways

What?

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