
Ask HN: Who Regrets Choosing Clojure? - shivekkhurana
The opinion about Clojure seems to be very polarizing. Some devs. refuse to write any other language, and some avoid it like plague.<p>The community also has a cult like appeal.<p>I&#x27;ve been writing Clojure for a long time, and don&#x27;t consider changing sides. But I know a few people who moved on (to Haskell, OCaml etc).<p>Did you ever regret using Clojure?<p>[Ask HN inspired by : https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=23283675]
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nanomonkey
I'm absolutely in love with Clojure.

That being said, it does suffer the Lisp curse, in that I now feel unable to
function in previous languages that I was proficient in because I'm now
allergic to boilerplate and the inability to create my own syntax when needed.
Lots of Python jobs out there that I feel like I should be pursuing, yet I
just can't seem to get excited anymore by non-lisp languages.

Wish there were more Clojure job opportunities out there.

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kazinator
Don't be surprised, though, if you discover you're not able to function in an
actual Lisp, either.

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nanomonkey
Ha! I was going to write more about how I no longer enjoy Common Lisp also,
but I didn't want to step on more toes than I already had.

Don't get me wrong, Clojure has it's difficulties. Simple things are sometimes
difficult to figure out how to do the correct way...and being hosted means you
end up having to know far more than I would like about Java or Javascript.

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shivekkhurana
Are there any objective reasons behind not "enjoy"ing CL any more?

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ledauphin
educated guess: lack of persistent data structures.

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shivekkhurana
But there are libraries that fill this gap, like [https://common-
lisp.net/project/fset/](https://common-lisp.net/project/fset/)

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sendben2
I see a lot of engineers voicing their (insightful) opinions here. What about
CTOs and engineering directors, HR, and headhunters who need to recruit? Do
you find it difficult to recruit for Clojure?

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TurboHaskal
The only two companies that I know that offered on site Clojure jobs no longer
accept new projects being written in it.

I stopped using Clojure after v1.2. I really love the language semantics:
idiomatic Clojure is such a joy to read, but ultimately got tired of the
lacklustre performance and the dogmatic, cult-like community.

I also no longer care about functional programming at this point in my career.
Looking back, I think FP was not a way to write better code but an excuse for
me to feel smug or superior to other programmers. I'm glad I grew over this.

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dragonwriter
> I also no longer care about functional programming at this point in my
> career. Looking back, I think FP was not a way to write better code but an
> excuse for me to feel smug or superior to other programmers.

Every major paradigm (procedural, functional, OO, logic, relational) applied
properly, is a way to write better code. If you approach it as a way to feel
smug and superior, that's about you, not the paradigm.

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TurboHaskal
That's... exactly what I said?

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dragonwriter
> That's... exactly what I said?

It's compatible with what you said, but then so is “FP doesn't help write
better software and is just an excuse for programmers to feel smug and
superior to others in th field .”

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throw03172019
Clojure backend with ClojureScript frontend for the last 4 years. No regrets
so far!

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rboyd
Good Clojure is pretty awesome. Bad Clojure sucks like any other bad code. The
Clojure maximalism can get kind of goofy.

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CameronBarre
In 4 years I haven't felt the need to look elsewhere.

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giantg2
I started to learn it years ago. It is interesting.

The bad part is the lack of jobs. Without jobs, I decided to focus my
attention on learning languages that are more common. I can't really say this
was a better choice since my career is on a downward trend...

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polityagent
you learnt what everyone else was learning, so now you're competing with
everyone else on their level.

learning something more niche can be a signal that helps you stand out, even
if it's not what you use at your next job.

having said that, networking with people is the number one contributor to
finding a great job.

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a-saleh
I used it ~7 years ago, and loved it.

Our manager loved it much less, because the ramp-up to productivity was around
a month for people not familiar with the language, so after our tech-lead left
for another project, we spent six months rewriting the thing in python :-/

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TurboHaskal
I know that feeling. I have been asked to rewrite existing, perfectly
functioning, high quality Perl, Clojure and Common Lisp projects to Java and
Python far too many times. It's soul breaking, specially when you know it's
being done in the name of wage control.

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polityagent
no regrets here (lead Dev at small company, 50ish employees) using for roughly
50% of the projects.

6 years ago we were fully Java, clojure allows us to mix the two without a
business killing rewrite.

I've never had any problems training people on it.

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k0t0n0
There are no jobs in clojure

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pigletti
I've written 100% clojure(script) full time professionally for the past 3
years and have turned down several offers for more clojure work.

There are certainly less jobs in Clojure but they're out there.

