On Jun 29, 2010, at 6:30 PM, cageface wrote:
On Jun 29, 1:22 pm, Chas Emerick <cemer...@snowtide.com> wrote:
Any talk about how Clojure might be "too much" for some, for whatever
reason, is out of bounds IMO. Clojure, as a language, is *simpler*
than just about all of the popular alternatives out there, and the
language is eminently approachable and practical for programmers from
varying domains and with varying levels of experience.
It just isn't. Recursion, s-expr syntax, non-mutability, macros and
the difference between compilation and evaluation etc etc are just
*harder* for most people to understand than simple infix imperative
code. Even MIT has thrown in the towel in this battle and switched to
Python for the SICP courses. I remember having discussions with Peter
Siebel about this while he was working on his Lisp book. Like a lot of
Lisp lovers, he seemed to think that making Lisp popular was just a
matter of making people see how eminently logical and simple and
practical it is. It's not that easy.
More talking up the complexity of Clojure, to its detriment. Stop
it. Familiarity is not a metric that anyone is aiming at, least of
all the language principals -- capability in various axes is, and
that's what's attracting people from all sides.
FWIW, I was in the room at the 2009 ILC when Prof. Sussman addressed
the scheme -> python switch, and I spoke with him afterwards about it
as well:
http://muckandbrass.com/web/x/zAAq
The switch had nothing to do with language complexity. This is all
totally besides the point.
Look at the results of your own usage poll. The top languages people
would use if Clojure were unavailable to them are:
1. scala
2. common lisp
3. haskell
4. scheme
These people just *aren't* the median. To insist otherwise is to live
in denial.
Of course, participants in that survey were self-selected, and you
fail to mention that the majority of respondents had "come from" Java
(by a factor of 2 over the next most common response). This is backed
up by my experience in talking with Clojure programmers more broadly,
including scads of people from "enterprisey" Java environments that
are looking at a lisp for the first time as providing a compelling
solutions to some of their problems.
Are they the "elite" of the Java universe, simply because they came to
Clojure? No, they're just early adopters, using a patchwork of
technologies to get their job done, and Clojure happens to hit a sweet
spot for them. To insist otherwise is to aggrandize those that are
"in the club" at the detriment of all those that might come to join us
out of reasonable self-interest.
- Chas
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