Re:The Axis Of Eval: Why I ignore Clojure
by lispm on Monday September 20, 2010 @11:14AM
(#1709100)
Is it more 'newbie' friendly? The tools are bare bones. Make a syntax error and you get a Java error. On error you are thrown to the top level. Open the debugger and you see Java internals. On Emacs it reuses CL's SLIME, which is not known to be newbie friendly. Otherwise one has to use a Java IDE, which are not known for their interactivity.
What does it make Newbie friendly? I was just seeing a video of Robert C Martin explaining Clojure - he looks like a Lisp newbie to me. Half of the time he was spending in a primitive REPL in a Terminal. Is that Newbie friendly? Maybe because one does not get distracted with slightly better REPLs, a SLIME REPL or even one of the other advanced REPLs? Then he was using Intellij. Is that more Newbie friendly? Perhaps to developers coming from Java?
I wonder how many of you are using Clojure like a Lisp (with its interactive development tools), and how many are using it like typical scripting language?
Anyway, I expect Clojure to improve on that front over time. But, as time goes by and the compiler is written in Clojure, the REPL gets improved, it has some better error handling, it gets real error messages, etc etc. ... it then will no longer be the sexy small Lisp which you have seen grow up. It will be a Lisp implementation like many others with all its complexity.
What does it make Newbie friendly? I was just seeing a video of Robert C Martin explaining Clojure - he looks like a Lisp newbie to me. Half of the time he was spending in a primitive REPL in a Terminal. Is that Newbie friendly? Maybe because one does not get distracted with slightly better REPLs, a SLIME REPL or even one of the other advanced REPLs? Then he was using Intellij. Is that more Newbie friendly? Perhaps to developers coming from Java?
I wonder how many of you are using Clojure like a Lisp (with its interactive development tools), and how many are using it like typical scripting language?
Anyway, I expect Clojure to improve on that front over time. But, as time goes by and the compiler is written in Clojure, the REPL gets improved, it has some better error handling, it gets real error messages, etc etc. ... it then will no longer be the sexy small Lisp which you have seen grow up. It will be a Lisp implementation like many others with all its complexity.