Comment by systems | Hacker News Reader

Comment by systems | Hacker News Reader

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If you need to force yourself, or if you need extra special motivation to use Clojure .. most likely you will never use it

You might spend sometime learning it out of curiosity, but you will never use it

The languages I used, are ones I had to use, either because they were the only option, or clearly the best option for my solution (C#, VB.Net, Powershell, SQL)

Clojure will never be your only option, and .. it being the best option is highly subjective

I tried to like Clojure, because of all the blogs and talks, and the reputation of it being a smart language for smart people (I obviously, wanted to belong to this group, and still do) .. but for my work, and use cases (Business Intelligence), it will never be the best option, or the only option

The same list that include Clojure, for me also include F#, D, Dart, Ada 2012, Idris, Julia, Rust .. I am sure since you asked this question, you have your own list too .. and you know, nothing will really work to motivate you

Clojure is the best option for me, on my own projects, because I like it and I'm more productive in it (this applies to Lisp in general, I suppose) than any other language I've tried. And when I'm working alone, that's all that matters :D

Now, when I'm working on a team... I must tell you I live in Florida and if I've ever met another Clojure/Lisp programmer in meatspace I'm not aware of it (and I'd be surprised). In fact, most of the Java developers I work with only really know Java (and some are helpless without Eclipse). So recommending anything that isn't Java probably wouldn't be wise. So, yea.

Hey, if you're anywhere near Melbourne, check out Swarmify! We use Clojure(Script).

Yea, I'm in Satellite Beach. Think I even interviewed (just a phone screen, really) with Swarmify a couple of years back before I had really gotten into Clojure.

I'm quite surprised by your conclusion that Clojure "is not the best option" for Business Intelligence. What general purpose language is better for that in your opinion?

There's a difference between "best tool for the job" and "most widely used tool for the job" at this moment in time. People's habits sometimes take years or decades to break (if they ever do).

Clojure as a data-oriented language is great in itself, but I can see why someone would choose say R or Python for BI/data science due to the ecosystem. Clojure can of course freeride on the Java or JS ecosystems, but I don't think those ecosystems offer the same breadth as R or Python either.

Try Hy (http://hylang.org) - an excellent Clojure-like Lisp in Python.

"If you need to force yourself, or if you need extra special motivation to use Clojure .. most likely you will never use it"

Amen. Learning is best a journey of desire, not compulsion.

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