Comment by iLemming | Hacker News Reader

Comment by iLemming | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

It's a bit of an oversimplification, I think.

Even though Clojure is not a statically typed language, it does have a type system.

Here's an example what Clojure.Spec lets you do. When I was working for a fintech company, we built a suite of specs for a ledger. Based on those specs we could generate data. And it wasn't just some set of key/value pairs with completely randomized numbers. It would generate "a proper" ledger, where every number in a transaction depends on other transactions.

We used that generated data to render UI locally and on the non-prod environments.

Using the same specs we build data validators, we re-used the specs to validate data in the input fields in the UI. Which is totally bonkers. How the heck you achieve code re-use between completely incompatible ecosystems - in our case, JVM and Javascript? Even Nodejs doesn't always let you re-use code between backend and the front. Clojure allows you.

Using the same specs, we've built property based/generative tests.

I've never experienced the joy of creating such robust, predictable, and reliable software with any other (statically typed or otherwise) language before.

I'm not saying you cannot build a similar thing (or even better) with Scala or Haskell (or some other PL). The simplicity of how Clojure allows you to write things like that - just incomparable.

I'm not familiar with Clojure Specs, but it definitely sounds exactly like the "Dynamic language implements type checking tooling to assert correctness", as referenced in the above post. The spec website just looks like type assertions as "validation" - what am I missing?

> Even Nodejs doesn't always let you re-use code between backend and the front.

This is not true. Check out Lodash. It's a dependency of pretty much every FE and BE NPM package that exists. Ignoring rendering libraries like React, client side JS and backend JS are "just" JS.

> I've never experienced the joy of creating such robust, predictable, and reliable software with any other (statically typed or otherwise) language before.

I think you should definitely keep doing the things that bring you joy!

> This is not true. Check out Lodash.

Respectfully, as someone who spent over a decade building front-end apps, I'd say: the code re-use between js in the browser and js in node still feels limited in comparison with Clojure/Clojurescript approach.

I'm not talking about utility libraries.

Because you chose to bake environment information into your code, that does not mean nodejs doesn’t support client/server reuse. Respectfully.

I never said "it doesn't support", it's just not the same.

Code re-use is just one of the aspects. When choosing a tool, especially a tool like a programming language, one needs to take "a holistic approach". Clojure is not a silver bullet. Neither is Haskell, Rust, or any other PL.

I like Clojure today, because today it makes sense for me to use it. For the projects I build. I'm sure, someday, it stops making sense for me to use it, and I will move onto something else.

You can use all sorts of arguments for people to try something else today, assuming they are just misinformed - either about Clojure or the other PLs (you're preaching about).

I can assure you though, most Clojuristas I know - didn't end up using Clojure by accident. It's a deliberate choice. After trying many other options.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com