I did read some of the answers on this topic but not all of them. From those I read, I feel they may not really be answering to the crux of the question: do the people you want to convince to use clojure actually care?
Most software developers do software development for a living, and they couldn't care less about what other technologies are there. They want to work from 9 to 5 and get paid, and for all that matters that's it. They probably learned all they know because there was some kind of internal mentoring or training course at work, otherwise they'd just know what was taught to them in university. I don't see a big point in trying to sell clojure (or any other functional language for that matter) to the typical "enterprise" software developer. If it doesn't have beans and doesn't run on some sort of a container it will just be outside of his comfort zone. Most people wouldn't see an advantage in knowing design patterns or to attempting to improve their code-base with ioc. They don't recognize there is a problem. And you can be sure that if it's 2015 and they know about it, it's either because they had to memorize some stuff about it in some oracle course or because they know someone will ask about those topics down the road -- in an interview, for instance. Bottom line: if it's 2015 and they "don't know" or "never heard" about clojure you can be damn sure they *don't want to know *about clojure. They don't know clojure because they just don't read blogs, don't read magazines and generally don't take any attention to what's out there -- they are *uninterested*. On Thu, Jul 23, 2015 at 9:37 AM, Johanna Belanger < johanna.belan...@gmail.com> wrote: > Leon, > > That sounds like hard-won experience, thank you for sharing it. I couldn't > find a Paul DeGrandis talk with that name, would you happen to have a link? > Is it "Clojure-Powered Startups" perhaps? > > Thanks, > Johanna > > On Saturday, July 18, 2015 at 6:47:44 AM UTC-7, Leon Grapenthin wrote: >> >> I have tried various different approaches from convincing of Clojure >> advantages in the Java devs concrete domain, showing off incredibly awesome >> toy projects, larger projects, not tryng to sell, trying to sell, sending >> ClojureTV videos and what not approach you can think of. I have not managed >> to introduce one Java dev to Clojure in a way that he picked it up and had >> no interest before. I have spent many hours thinking about how I could >> improve my "evangelizing" skills. And today I believe that what you can do >> is very little and your approach does not affect the outcome a lot. There >> is enough motivating and introductional content about Clojure on the web. >> If someone isn't motivated by all this and your initial impulse, he is >> simply not able to upgrade. It might be a lack of time, a lack of interest >> in programming altogether aka silent burnout, the fear of having to learn >> new things, the fear of forgetting old things, the fear of not wanting to >> leave a comfort zone, the fear of not being able to autocompleteprogram or >> the fact that someone is simply happy with clicking classes together and >> writing a new group by implementation every few days and being paid for it >> very well and many other reasons. >> >> In many cases an existing comfort zone is an obstacle that you can't >> change. Almost nobody leaves his comfort zone only because you told him >> about something else outside of it, even if its gold and he believes you. >> OTOH people who leave their comfort zone on purpose every now and then do >> it because they are intrinsically motivated to do so. If they are out of >> ideas where to go, they will ask you for one and then "selling" Clojure is >> about as easy as mentioning between one and three interesting facts about >> it. They will be watching Rich Hickey talks in a minute. >> >> Unless a programmer is adventureous and likes to try out new languages or >> has decided that he "wants to learn something new", there is little you can >> do. In the other case there is little that you have to do. >> >> Personally I have simply decided not to waste time on trying to convince >> programmers to learn Clojure, instead I try to help those who are. >> >> OTOH spending time on improving evangelizing and elevator pitching is >> still well spent if you want to convince managers. I find Rich Hickeys >> rationale on the Clojure page is a great starting point and there is also a >> great talk by Paul deGrandis (Clojure minimizes risk). >> >> On Friday, July 10, 2015 at 12:20:23 AM UTC+2, Johanna Belanger wrote: >>> >>> Hi :) >>> >>> I've recently broached the subject of Clojure with another dev in my >>> organization, and his response was basically "What's Clojure"? and I'm not >>> sure how to answer that in a way that might inspire him. "It's a >>> dynamically-typed functional Lisp with persistent immutable data structures >>> that runs on the JVM" doesn't seem like it will grab his interest. =) >>> >>> I work primarily in .NET, and he does enterprise Java. I don't know him >>> well enough to know how happy he is with it. He did express interest in >>> learning .Net. >>> >>> I came to an appreciation of Clojure through >>> >>> -CQRS (the power of decomplection!) >>> -Sussman and Abelson's SICP class at MIT online (the power of >>> homoiconicity and functions!) >>> -the death of Silverlight (alternatives to Javascript in the browser?) >>> >>> By the time I found Rich Hickey's talks (eg Simple Made Easy) I was >>> pretty well primed to love Clojure. I've been using it for little personal >>> projects and prototyping for a couple of years, but I haven't put it in >>> production because no one else here knows it. >>> >>> Could anyone tell me how they got from enterprise Java to Clojure? >>> >>> Thanks very much, >>> Johanna >>> >>> -- > 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 > --- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Clojure" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Clojure" group. 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