On Sat, Dec 19, 2009 at 9:21 AM, David Nolen <dnolen.li...@gmail.com> wrote: > I don't think anybody in the Clojure community wants to Clojure to be a > fringe language.
Actually, I don't mind if Clojure retains a certain degree of "fringe" status. To clarify, I think the ideal size for a language community is somewhere in between the two extremes. You certainly want enough people who love working with a language that the language keeps moving forward and cool libraries and tools are continually being developed. On the other hand, there's something very nice about knowing a language that is a bit of a "secret weapon". Sometimes companies advertise that they are looking for a certain language, not because they really need that language, but because they know that any developer who knows that language is likely to be of a certain high caliber. They use the language as a way to weed out run-of-the-mill software engineers. Languages like Haskell, Scheme, and ML are often used for this purpose (not Java, of course, it's too mainstream). Such job posts also send a signal to talented developers that their company is a special place to work, because they know the value of "secret weapon" languages. I would actively like to see Clojure remain obscure enough to fall into this category. I sympathize with the original poster's point, however. I have been using Lisp dialects for 20 years, and I still find Lisp code harder to read than its mainstream counterparts. The parentheses provide a visual sameness to the code that forces you to think very hard to understand it. Python, on the other hand, is the most readable language I've encountered. So, despite all the claims that you'll "learn to love parentheses", I'll say that it's not necessarily true. I have no love for the hyper-consistent prefix syntax for functions, macros, and keywords, and all the deeply-nested parentheses that result. Still, I'm flexible enough that I have no problem *tolerating* Lisp's syntax. And if other people can't see past the parentheses and understand the value of the language, I have a hard time getting worked up about that (see above point). -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Clojure" group. To post to this group, send email to clojure@googlegroups.com Note that posts from new members are moderated - please be patient with your first post. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/clojure?hl=en
