On Jun 28, 9:39 pm, Brent Millare <brent.mill...@gmail.com> wrote: > While I agree his wording wasn't really the best, I think it can also > be interpreted differently depending on what kind of n00b he is > talking about.
For the record, "noob" was not my choice of terms. Like any other profession, programming attracts people with a wide range of ability. Education makes a difference, but, for whatever reason, some people just seem to have more of a knack for it than others. In this sense you can be a "pro" at 20 or a "noob" at 60. A lot of programmers are going to work through a Clojure tutorial or two and run with the headache it gives them back to Python and the many tasks for which something like that is perfectly adequate. Common Lisp is not a niche language today because it presents a poor beginner experience. Good, turnkey IDEs and documentation have been available for years. The problem is that actually getting anything done with Common Lisp is a nightmare. Libraries are sparse and incompatible among implementations. Crucial things like FFI and concurrency are non-standard. Interfacing with the rest of the world is tedious. The reason there's so much buzz about Clojure and Scala right now is that you can actually get real work done in them. Drop them on top of an existing java system and you've got everything you need to solve real problems, with a much nicer language than Java. I'm optimistic about Clojure because it allows *good* programmers to jump over the walls that stop you in other lisps. Again, I'm all for making Clojure as beginner-friendly as possible. But I think that the success of Clojure in the long run will depend a lot more on making sure that the minority that actually have the skill to absorb and work in its paradigms derive a real competitive advantage from it. -- 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
