Clojurians Log v2

@p-himik although I mostly agree with you, there's a crucial point we disagree - that the issues would manifest in Clojure. Most things in the Rails world are closely tied - some specific version of Rails depends on a specific version of Ruby, and most libraries also depend on a specific version. Also, Rails have zero worries about backward compatibility, and is itself composed by 5-7 libraries, and all versions should match.

So, if you want to upgrade Rails (the framework) you have to upgrade 5-7 libraries, all that have slightly different APIS for each version bump even when no feature really changed - most of the times is just a change in the methods. Also... the test libraries' versions also are tied with specific Rails versions, so you can't really depend on your tests...

@gbson We still have code in production that we wrote in 2009 (legacy code, prior to our adoption of Clojure, that we still plan to rewrite to Clojure at some point). A lot of projects I've seen over my career have survived for a decade (or more).

An insurance company that I worked at, as one of my first jobs, had projects that had been in continuous production usage for close to twenty years 👀

(COBOL code that had been written in the very early days of the language that still ran, although it had been ported to more modern servers)

@drewverlee Looking at that diagram, I can only assume that he didn't want to make the diagram more complex by adding a D (circle) with an h (function) from C to D. He shows f ; g going from A to C, and illustrates the identity functions, and then associativity.

This page has notes on the talk that confirms that https://www.infoq.com/presentations/category-theory-propositions-principle/ -- "Another law states that if you compose three functions, it doesn't matter what order you compose them, i.e., composition is associative." (a law not illustrated by the diagram)

Hi folks, quick question/survey: If you were not allowed to use Clojure when working on a backend application (non-user-facing) what language would you choose? In other words, what's your first alternative to Clojure?

Most of the time it would be Python. If on the JVM would be Scala. 🙂

Apart from some Java, I have done 1 project with jRuby. Clojure is probably 99% of the backends I've done on the JVM.

Oh yes, I've also done Scala, but somehow I didn't remember that ;)

I guess it depends on what kind of project it is. If it's a simple CRUD app jRuby on rails might not be that bad.

I'd be interested in trying Kotlin, but I have no experience with that so far

I would consider learning a new language for that - Kotlin, Ruby, Rust, Common Lisp, even Haskell. Python - not a chance.

Oh, wait, I thought we were limited to the JVM. Depending on the size and type of work, Rust might also be a nice choice.

Not sure about Haskell. It's interesting, but personally I haven't found myself being very productive with it

If you're looking for something close to Clojure: Elixir or clojerl on the BEAM might also nice to try

Honestly, I wouldn't recommend Rust unless your app really needs to avoid a garbage collector for some reason. For your typical backend service rust is overkill

I agree. It depends on what you need: low memory consumption, optimal performance, just a small thing in between: then Rust is fine

+1 to Elixir too! I love using it for high I/O use cases and is quite pleasant to write too!

Isn’t it kinda. Road question to give meaningful answers? What kind of app?

The experience using it is also extremely different from clojure. There's nothing like a repl based workflow

Let's say a web api (rest or gRPC) or an event-driven service (think consuming messages from a queue doing some processing then publishing the result to another queue and/or database)

I’d definitely do Elixir

If I were to pick a language that I've already used in production, I'd probably just hold my nose and use Java or CFML depending on the context. If I could use any language that I've experimented with (for the purposes of Pragmatic Programmer learn-a-new-language-every-year), I'd probably pick Kotlin so that I could get solid production experience with it.

I use Kotlin on the backend, along with Clojure. Kotlin has been deployed in multiple microservices. I find it a very pleasant language to use (if I couldn't use Clojure)

IMHO, whereas Scala was designed in Academia (and thus shows it), Kotlin was designed to be a working, practical language that scratches a lot of Java's itches 🙂

Our migration from Java to Kotlin was painless and very successful.

Of course, that's if I could not choose Clojure 🙂

The real reason turning computers off and on again so often helps. And here with my primitive computer scientists belief that it was because of programmers often making mistakes in managing state: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/on

Thanks for the answers. Interesting no one mentioned GoLang

I would give OCaml a chance too but it seems pretty niche still

To be the weirdo here, I'd use Haskell or F# assuming I don't predict any hurdles.

(having used Scala in production, I would not use it again -- that's partly in response to @dharrigan 🙂 )

@jplfdsilva Go was one of the languages I learned as part of my PragProg practice and I really did not like it at all. I much preferred Rust (which I learned later, and was much more what I had hoped Go might be).

help, I can't stop getting in fights on the internet

This was the response to me defending Java records

(if you were not "allowed" to use Clojure, I suspect you would not be "allowed" to use any number of minority languages -- unless you were joining a shop that already used such a language and used only that one language for backend work)

Some people just can't be reasoned with 🙂

I'm a consultant and my clients are usually big and/or old organizations which ends up resulting in them using Java + Springboot

This has to do with most of them being concerned with difficulties with hiring

I mean, there is a ton of history and systems that are mutable-by-default, and it sometimes does help, IMO when the mutability is limited to a small enough part of a system that can be easily reasoned about. Some people have either not hit that pain point, or they are mired in it, but see it as a necessary part of software development.

Which ends up turning into a vicious circle

Yeah, and modern Java + Spring Boot isn't horrible so if that's what I had to use because of a client, I'd hold my nose and do it.

But it's still a lot of boilerplate though

It certainly wouldn't be my first choice, after Clojure 🙂 I don't think it would even be in my top five at this point.

True, even modern Java + Spring Boot is still pretty repetitive. Maybe I'd write a Clojure program to generate some of the Java / Boot stuff 🙂

Anyway, my hypothesis was that Clojure developers would favor dynamic typed languages over statically typed ones.

Aside from a few Python/Ruby responses, that doesn't generally seem to be holding up? Interesting...

I would favor functional over OO, dynamic vs static is almost secondary to me, although I do prefer Clojure over Haskell / F# / OCaml in the end

Having a goal for the interaction tends to help increase the likely hood it wont be frustrating. What do you hope is going to happen here? On the specific's of the problem at hand. Just calmly explain the relationship between clojures immutable data structures and what their currently using. Let them sleep on it a couple times. Hopefully, In a week they will be telling you how useful they are.

> I have never seen a real world bug caused by a mutable object. This indicates they're under some amount of stress, as i doubt many OO experts/ thought leaders would attempt this line of reasoning.

if all else fails. just remember its not your fault https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3H61INFma8g (parody of good will hunting)

Yeah, if my client was a Microsoft shop, I'd probably push for F# rather than C# (I've learned a little of the former, again for my PragProg practice, by attending workshops on F# at conferences and hanging around F# programmers for a week 🙂 ; I don't know any C# but I suspect I could pick it up, based on my Java knowledge, if I really had to). To be honest, as a consultant working for a big client, I could probably muster up enough knowledge quickly to be able to tackle whatever language they mandated -- but I would prefer clients that let me use languages I actually know well (and like).

Unfortunately most of the time we don't get to choose.

A online TLA+ REPL (not the Clojure kind, of course) I have been working on, made with Fulcro, but as this is not the point, I put it here. https://bit.ly/2QYNDoH

Considering getting a standing desk. Anyone have any favorites, or things to consider?