Clojurians Log v2

Hello, I'm prepping the State of Clojure 2020 survey and wanted to get some feedback before it goes live

hey all

howdy

Question: "What is your primary Clojure, ClojureScript, or ClojureCLR development environment?" Answers from last year are: • Emacs (CIDER, Spacemacs, Emacs Live, inf-clojure, other) • Vim (vim-fireplace, vimclojure, other) • Eclipse + Counterclockwise • IntelliJ + Cursive Clojure • Light Table • Sublime Text • Atom (Proto REPL, other) • VS Code (Calva, other)

What should I add? What should I remove?

last year's results https://www.surveymonkey.com/results/SM-S9JVNXNQV/

this was Q12

For Atom, can you mention Chlorine explicitly please? It's actively maintained but ProtoREPL is essentially dead at this point.

so should it say "Atom (Chlorine, other)" ?

Yup.

are there others? does anyone still use Proto REPL?

possible to separate CIDER from other non-CIDER versions? I know Stu and some others use emacs without CIDER.

does it matter?

A few, but only with older versions of Atom and several plugins, since ProtoREPL was broken by updates in those and no one is around to fix it.

to get a sense of how many people use inf-clojure. but not a huge deal

my general intent with this question is to provide a resource for people looking to find an editor and knowing where the crowd is. I don't know that CIDER vs not-CIDER is anywhere near as important as Emacs vs not Emacs

we used to have them split out and I found it was more confusing than useful

fair. should light table be removed? I understand its completely unmaintained and quite out of date

Light Table and Counterclockwise were both <1% last year so I'm planning to remove those

does that list of Emacs choices cover the major players?

looks good to me

As an emacs/spacemacs user I can't say I've heard of Emacs-Live, is that something that has any significant takeup?

no idea, that's why I'm asking

i've heard of it. its a config that's keyed towards Clojure. might be useful for a beginner

Nightcode & the oakes stack?

things not on the list, possibly to add: Nightcode, IntelliJ w/ clojure-kit, Conjure, Neovim w/ Acid

those all had a few mentions in "Other" last year, but not enough that I would expect them to be >1%

There’s https://github.com/mogenslund/liquid. I’m not sure anyone would use it as their primary editor, but I do have the sense that it’s sometimes used as a complementary one.

Are the Vim options still a good list? vim-fireplace, vimclojure, other

REBL?

put REBL as a separate yes/no question?

prob not worth it. every question makes the survey longer and reduces the number of respondents so I'm going to resist adding new stuff if at all possible

Ok, next topic...

REBL usage would be nice to see -- but it's an add-on to any existing editor/REPL setup, not a replacement.

I wonder if Socket REPL vs nREPL is worth asking?

if you magically knew the answer, what would you do with the information?

Fair question. I don't think it's actionable but I do think it would be interesting to see how much uptake either of those have (REBL, Socket REPL).

I think I have a sense of REBL from the Patreon/issues/traffic

I could see socket/nrepl being of interest to @cfleming but not sure who else (but maybe he knows that answer already)

Q17 What tools do you use to compile/package/deploy/release your Clojure projects? Answers: clj, Leiningen, Boot, Maven, Gradle, Ant, make, custom scripts

What's missing? What should be removed?

@alexmiller Can you share the REBL usage sense you have? (since it sounds like it won't go into the survey).

well you use it :)

it falls off rapidly after that :)

Q17. Given the breadth of packaging tools for clj, is it worth separating some of those out as individual options? (I don't feel strongly about that, just a suggestion). Otherwise, that list sounds good to me.

That's too bad. I think REBL is awesome and would love to see more folks using it. Of course, I'd also like to see more updates from Cognitect on it too 🙂

it's small right now and a comparatively narrow slice of attention. lot of chicken and egg there of course. we expected it to be a slow burn.

If it were OSS, I'd be eager to contribute 🙂

like the IDE one, I'm trying to get a big picture feel (doing a separate clj-focused survey at some point might be interesting)

so trying to get the "families"

ant was at 0% last year so going to finally remove it :)

this question is on the "Clojure" page too so it omits some cljs possibilities (that's a separate question)

lots of people put shadow-cljs in the comments for this one, not sure how best to communicate clojure-ness here

always a bunch of Ansible here too, not sure if that makes sense

like maybe the question needs different wording here

maybe I should remove "deploy"

For Q15, will 1.10.1 and 1.10.0 be separate options? Or will you just ask about the overall version? (1.10 vs 1.9 etc)

Shadow-cljs is listed in Q22 -- I'm surprised it was "lots" in Q17. Maybe add "(not ClojureScript)` to the question? :)

@alexmiller thought about separating compile/package from deploy/release? that's probably why there is a lot of Ansible in the responses

and I see you said that in the scrollback 🙂

I changed it to 1.10.x (so grouped). I decided I cared more about 1.10.x vs others than about 1.10.0 vs 1.10.1

you can look in the Other responses - it's easily the most listed

Not doubting you, just echoing your surprise, and suggesting a way to avoid it?

yeah, maybe it's time to tease this apart a bit more. It could be a matrix question too with tool / use dimensions

yeah, thx

I'm not even sure what the right set of options for "deploy" is but maybe that's a good signal of needing more info

deploy has multiple meanings -- we talk about deploying systems to production but we also talk about deploying JAR files to Clojars/Central (and probably other meanings too?)

I think I'd start with a) what are the right verbs? and b) what are the right nouns? (with the anticipation of maybe changing the whole approach based on the answers)

yeah, lib vs app are different domains

for libs, I'm interested in knowing whether you make an artifact, how you make it, and how you put it somewhere for people to use

I think it would be good to get some statistics on OS usage: Linux, MacOS, Windows, other - maybe split into: local dev environment / production environment

+1, got it

some common answer sets: • (for clj git deps): no artifact, n/a, git repo • (for Maven artifacts): jar, Leiningen/boot/clj, Leiningen/boot/clj, clojars/s3/deps.co/? • (for cljs libs): shadow?, shadow? buck?, npm?

I added: > maybe split into: local dev environment / production environment

still not sure I even have the right set of dimensions here, but I think this set of questions could be replaced with something more interesting/useful

(my impression is that a lot of people develop on MacOS and deploy to linux for example)

yep

this is worth asking and I will look at the question options for it

some kind of matrix answer is probably best

and be more concrete about library vs apps make it able to have more interesting concrete options

not my call

I get the impression that Windows usage is increasing (for development) as Clojure reaches more people -- based on the number of questions I see about Windows-specific tooling over the last year.

Would be nice to have a sense of "primary development O/S" and "primary production O/S" (but I suspect that will be mostly Linux so it may not be as interesting?).

yeah, I'll split it out although I suspect Linux is the 99% for prod

Windows dev use is a 2 way thing too - when it's bad, it pushes Windows users away, either forever, or to WSL or Linux VM

so "there are few Windows users" can be cause or effect

It would be nice to finalize CLI on Windows so it could be promoted to the main site, instead of a wiki on an alpha repo 🙂

yep, it is one of my goals for 2020 :)

If you want to take any of my ported code (deps.exe stuff), feel free

Candidate verbs of interest: • manage dependencies ("manage" is weak) • compile (I assume this is mostly for apps and in tandem with packaging, so maybe should not be included) • run tests • package (create an artifact - jar, war, vm package, cloud template ?) • release library (make a version of a library available for use) • deploy application

stepping away for a few, feel free to comment on that

yeah, I haven't even looked at any of that yte

We should probably take this to #clj-on-windows if we want to dig in further. I've certainly been pretty happy with Scoop as a package manager for Windows but the deps.clj native image has simpler command-line quoting than the PS script so that's also very appealing... And CLI-in-Clojure, compiled to per-platform native code seems nicer than bash + PS + ...

There is now a single-line PS installer for the executable. The only requirement is Powershell (to run the installer and the checksum code for caching) and java.exe. Works in cmd.exe

If you have any questions, feel free to ping me in #clj-on-windows or anywhere else

Just manually downloading the .exe into a dir on the path works too btw.

This question seems more like "what editor do you use". Nothing to do with which plugins you use.

In fact, separating those two questions might be interesting (vim has 3 competing plugins right now, emacs has cider/inf)

Oops, second point was discussed below.

Vim-iced is big too.

I wouldn't mention neovim separately

Vimclojure is dead. Most popular I see now is fireplace/conjure

Decide where to invest time building tooling?

thx, added

fwiw, there are other things too, e.g. monroe

i think some people examine some of the survey results thinking to examine alternatives. if you're going to leave things out, please consider stating the general intent.

inf-clojure isn't left out - it's in there

there are other things like monroe and at least one derivative of it

(has always been in there)

not familiar with Monroe - that's an emacs thing?

i think the intent is totally fine

it is another nrepl-based emacs mode, yes

ok, I'll add

as far as I can remember, this is the first I've ever heard of someone mentioning it in relation to the survey

as i mentioned above, i think the general intent to not cover everything is fine -- i just think it's worth mentioning that explicitly. nobody knows all the ways in which clojure is being used, nor all of the tooling options, afaict 🙂

what kind of tooling?

yep, that's why there is an Other option to add whatever we missed

I use those to adjust the next year

but I'm trying to avoid missing anything important, which has happened in the past

Fireplace vs conjure maybe... Although I think users go where the tooling is. So I'm probably working the wrong direction. Wagging the tail of the dog so to speak.

I think it would be interesting to see Clojure and ClojureScript as separate server side languages.

The survey is already partitioned into Clojure-specific, ClojureScript-specific, and common sections...

he means in the server-side language used with cljs question

I assume

Yes.

I can break those out. I have no idea what that breakdown would be

Ah, gotcha.

Q21 gives a partial sense of that, separating Browser from Node.js?

I think just having Clojure and ClojureScript as separate options on Q20 would do it.

I guess Q21 includes some small group of folks using cljs only on the backend, no frontend...?

Also, I am sometimes using Nashorn as my CLJS REPL, so maybe that should be a an option for whatever Q asked about that.

I may have missed this, but is there a draft of this we’re looking at while discussing?

We are looking at the 2019 survey. Posted in the start of this channel.

Ok, thanks.

Is Q11 useful information for anyone? It seems like that might inform the development of Clojure itself, but it’s mostly asking about things which are done now.

Re: editor choice, it’s tricky. In general, I tend to think that Emacs vs non-Emacs is the main interesting question, but I’m not sure the same is true of e.g. Atom. Thinking about it, I tend to have a view of Emacs as a homogeneous environment which is clearly not true despite CIDER’s dominance.

I don’t think that clojure-kit warrants a separate question, especially if there’s an Other option which can be filled in manually. I follow their repo so I see all their issues, and there’s very little activity.

It would be nice if it were possible to have a series of checkboxes or a radio button associated with each option, so selecting Atom would allow you to choose between Chlorine, Proto-REPL or whatever.

which one is Q11?

that's a great idea. i hope the survey allows it

I think it's fairly true as far as Clojure/Script dev in emacs goes -- I've only run across a small handful of people who don't use CIDER, and that tends to come hand-in-hand with several other packages. I'm (idly) curious what non-homogeneity you were thinking of.

i'm interested to see how many use emacs but not CIDER. I know there are a few

Emacs is pretty much the textbook definition of a non-homogeneous environment - every Emacs installation on the planet is basically a special snowflake. But specifically for Clojure, there’s CIDER, clojure-mode without CIDER, inf-clojure, enspiral and probably more I’m not aware of. Someone mentioned monroe, which I’ve seen around but have no idea if anyone beyond the author is using.

It'd be interesting to have a free-response question about libraries -- something like "What non-core libraries do you use most?" or "What third-party libraries are most critical for you as a Clojure/Script developer?". I think the answers would be useful for Clojurists Together, and would be useful to the community in helping less community-involved folks keep up with the critical ecosystem as new parts of it emerge. That said, I realize that free-text questions are a pain in the ass to deal with 🙂

Oh, totally agreed that emacs in general is all over the place. But my impression as an emacs user has been that the vast majority of people are using CIDER at this point (98%+, maybe?).

I’d definitely be interested in this too. It would be really useful to have a list of libraries by popularity, but I have no idea how to collect that or how to measure popularity.

That’s my impression too, but I don’t really know. I’d be interested to know how many people use clj-refactor, too.

Which aspects of Clojure have been important to you…

@cfleming mentioned a good point. "how many people use clj-refactor". Maybe make this a bit more broad and check static analysis tools? clojure-lsp, clj-refactor, joker, clj-kondo, cursive

I guess number of stars on github is a proxy, but a pretty rough one. It seems like it especially wouldn't capture libraries gradually falling out into disuse (I know I, at least, rarely remove stars...).

clojar downloads?

That definitely seems better than github stars, but also doesn't seems like it captures decreased use over time very well.

Retrieve dependencies?

In Q23 I’d like to know how many people are using figwheel main and how many are using figwheel classic.

Also, there’s only an option for “ClojureScript’s browser REPL”, but it also has REPLs for node.js, nashorn etc. There’s probably a whole spectrum of potential information to be teased out here, but I don’t know how to ask the right questions for “I use the node.js REPL for server side code but the browser REPL is too hard to set up”.

Q24 should include Shadow as an option.

Yes, I’d be very interested in knowing this.

Although refactoring tools are kind of orthogonal to static analysis.

Yeah a multi select. I think all of the refactoring tools require static analysis of some sort though

But a general lint/static category

I'd love to know of the Atom users how many are still trying to use ProtoREPL vs how many are now using Chlorine -- but it's purely curiosity, rather than a useful metric. And of course, with the demise of ProtoREPL, there may well have been people abandoning Atom altogether...

That’s what I decided too

There were 3 people that listed it in other last year

Neither of those are worth breaking out imo

Actually, I still find this one useful, particularly when compared longitudinally over many years

Unless people actually list all of their libraries (and dependent libraries?) it seems unlikely that this would yield meaningful data

which is to say, I completely agree that if I could wave a wand and know the answer to this, I'd be interested. I've spent time a couple years trying to design a question to do so, and gave up. Either there is public stuff that could be automatically analyzed (pour one out for clj-info RIP) better than a survey OR it's manual which is either too tedious OR it's manual but wildly incomplete.

you also have to take into account transitive dependencies and lib frequency to really get good information

the automated approach is the best answer to that imo

The best I can think of would be to find all project.clj and deps.edn files on Github and parse them. I think Github provides data dumps which might make that tractable, but I don’t know enough about it.

very doable - clj-info used to do this

sorry cross-clj ? whatever it was calleed

Oh yeah, cross-clj. That was wider in scope though, it actually parsed all the program source, and only did it for a specific list of projects.

I think Eric Normand did this analysis too

or maybe this https://jakemccrary.com/blog/2017/04/17/what-are-the-most-used-clojure-libraries/

I think the danger is in over-reporting direct deps and under-reporting transitive deps, but sounds like a fun project :)

That all makes sense to me, and clearly you’ve spent plenty of time thinking about it!

@cfleming on Q23, I'm wondering if asking this question in a different way would help make it more useful. Something like "What tools do you use for interactive ClojureScript development?" with multi select

Yes, that sounds better. I think there are too many dimensions to get all the information, but that would be a good start.

yeah, "REPL" seems very limiting given all the things that are available

like is Ghostwheel another option too?

Right, lots of people don’t use REPLs at all and just use hot reloading, and that might be distorting the “I don’t use a REPL” answer.

I actually don’t know the answer to that - I’m aware that Ghostwheel is a thing that exists, but that’s about it.

I guess ghostwheel is an additional thing that might be used in tandem with more than one answer

Ghostwheel replaces defn so specs are inline with the function definition I think. Irrelevant here