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Comment by harlowja | Hacker News Reader

There really should be a comparison to something other than java, it doesn't seem fair.

Fair point! Well, Google will show you plenty of results for, e.g. "clojure vs. scala". What I was going for wasn't an unfair comparison, but rather a kind of bridge for Java / JVM folks who might be interested in a more functional way of life. My bad if I missed the mark. :-/

I think its a fine article - it delivered exactly what the title said. It wasn't "Thinking in Clojure for programmers of all imperative or OO languages".

I don't think it's an unfair comparison at all. Comparing Clojure and Scala can only generate interest in a few small (though growing) communities.

You've done an excellent job of showing Clojure's benefits to a much, much wider audience - programmers not familiar with functional programming. Also it's compelling to hear that you're successfully using Clojure to efficiently "script" larger Java codebases.

Kudos for writing such a hype-less, non-condescending, and educational tutorial for Java/imperative programmers!

Thanks swannodette, very kind of you! Yes, it's been cool to layer Clojure on top of legacy Java and see what happens. Some want to sell Clojure as "a better Java than Java"... I think that may be a little misguided. But, there are certain situations where it rings true... at least IMHO

I don't think Clojure's goal is to be "better Java". Rather, that for whatever task you might consider Java, writing that task in Clojure should be:

  * easier to write
  * perform just as well
  * be concurrency safe

Clojure isn't there yet, but it's well on its way I think.

it's easier to have unsafe concurrency in clojure. It's certainly easier to get it right by default than in java, but it's still very easy to introduce a race condition or some such.

Typo, I meant easy not easier

true but you can use it to script java witch would be better then doing it in java.

Clojure isn't really 'layered on Java'; it does however run in the JVM (just like Java).

Java developer here, I like it so far. Your post got me quite excited but I'm not really sure where to go from here.

Yeah, I can see what you mean. My question to ZoFreX and those in a similar situation: what specific questions / fears / needs should be addressed in a good Part 2?

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