I think the bottom line with Clojure is it's not an ecosystem well-suited for non-veteran programmers. For as simple as the language is, effectively using Paredit, navigating partially documented libraries, diving into source code to see how things interact—it's tough as a new developer. I don't believe Clojure is overtly hostile to newcomers; it's just crafted by veterans, for veterans. And this is the result.
adlpz|3 years ago
I consider myself something akin to a veteran. I've been coding for over two decades. Not sure if that qualifies, but anyway.
My point is: it's been with experience that I've come to value ergonomics the most.
And that for me includes having a thriving and focused ecosystem, extensive industry penetration, good and stable tooling, lots of well known codebases learn from, etc.
It was when I was young and inexperienced that I didn't see those as the important bits. I was happy hacking on any half assed editor exploring undocumented APIs and trying to discover patterns and idioms by myself. I was happy to waste time.
I'm not anymore. That's why, while a love Clojure as a language, I don't really use it that much nowadays.
Too much friction.
garbagecoder|3 years ago
I still like hacking on things, but only on hobby projects. When it has something to do with work, I agree. Clojure reminds me of why I liked coding in the first place and I like the way LISP-type languages make me think differently about what I'm doing.
But "in the real world," yeah, I don't want those things. I want something I can build and maintain and be done.
huahaiy|3 years ago
Our experience is that Clojure is a very good language for newcomers to programming as a profession.
In fact, we almost exclusively hire new computer science graduates. None of them had heard of Clojure before joining, and the vast majority of them became useful in 2 weeks, and become productive in a few months. What you described as barriers are the things that got sorted out in the first day when they join.
We do not hire veterans unless they already know Clojure. These people need to unlearn stuff, some of them are resistant to changes, so we don't bother with them.