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Comment by bsder | Hacker News Reader

I like the fact that the Go guys continue to avoid talking in detail about Rust and Clojure.

That tells me that the don't think they can win the comparison.

The core goals behind Rust and Clojure are very different from those behind Go. This article/presentation would not be appropriate for those languages. I don't think anyone would say that Rust or Clojure are simple languages, or that simplicity is a core goal for them. Rust's core goals are performance, memory safety, and lack of race conditions (AFAICT). And clojure is a LISP which puts it in its own category, really.

It's like saying a jeep can't compare to a ferrari or a minivan - other than having 4 wheels, they're really not at all designed to do the same kinds of things... Sure, maybe driving to the corner store they're all pretty much the same, but which do you want in 8" of mud? Which do you want in a car chase on the highway? Which do you want to bring your 4 kids to soccer practice?

> Rust's core goals are performance, memory safety, and lack of race conditions (AFAICT)

We usually formulate this as "memory safety without garbage collection," which has secondary implications on speed and concurrency, but yes. (Also, 'data races' rather than 'race conditions,' technically).

Thanks for clarifying :) Yes, I should be more careful about specifying data races vs. race conditions :)

> I don't think anyone would say that .... Clojure is simple language, or that simplicity is a core goal for it.

Good god you are so wrong.

Watch yourself some of Rich Hickey's trove of excellent presentations, including the one where he breaks down the detailed etymology of the word "simple" and how much he strives for that.

http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-Easy

Who can win against lisp anyways?

The reasons we aren't seeing more lisp/clojure are not technical/objective ones but attitude, social and nework factors - which are just as relevant though.

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