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Comment by simongray | Hacker News Reader

Clojure/ClojureScript is this satisfying combination of "boring" and stable, yet at the same time cutting edge. I think people need to get over their fear of the parens and start paying more attention to it.

Having used Clojure exclusively in my professional life for the last 2 years, it saddens me that we don't see more converts from JS. It's such a great language for today's reactive frontend paradigm. Everyone in the mainstream seems to want JS to turn into Java and are massively migrating to TypeScript. I can't help but feel that TypeScript is just an evolutionary dead-end.

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I just swapped from using Clojure to TypeScript at work and I can't feel any different. Types are really useful at organizations where people need to work together, Spec has been largely underwhelming on this front. I wish more attention would've gone into core.typed. Hickey has generally spent most of his time with the language choosing other peoples great ideas and picking the right set of them to combine for Clojure. Spec feels overly ambitious and more like a research project than something than something fundamental.

> I think people need to get over their fear of the parens and start paying more attention to it.

i have no problem with parentheses. it’s the JVM that gives me pause. i feel .NET and BEAM are the better choices these days with c#/f# and elixir/erlang/lfe, respectively.

i would love to use a lisp/scheme but just don’t feel comfortable with the JVM and how much of it comes through in clojure.

Then compile clojure to .Net?

Clojure has compilers for both jvm and .net

as far as i can tell clojure clr is just a side project for a couple of people and in no way gets the same full support as clojure on jvm, not to mention that it lags behind clojure on jvm. and again as far as i can tell, no one really uses clojure clr. i have never seen anyone mention it other than to point out it exists. it isn’t like clojure purports to be a lisp on both jvm and .net.

it is also unclear how to interop clojure clr with c# and f#. clojure clr doesn’t address the want of a stable vm, clear usage, and supporting toolset.

Out of the frying pan and into the fire.

TS is a very safe option because you can just strip the TS parts out and you're left with normal Javascript, basically.

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