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Comment by fnbr | Hacker News Reader

I tried Clojure, and I quite like it as a language (especially the thread-first & thread-last macros [1, 2]).

I don't, however, like the ecosystem surrounding it. I find Leiningen (while an excellent tool) far too heavy for the majority of my purposes. I much prefer other functional languages (e.g. OCaml, Haskell) that don't need such an intricate project structure.

With OCaml & Haskell, I can start with one source file in one directory and gradually build up to a more sophisticated layout as needed, rather than have a complicated layout imposed upon me by the project.

[1] http://clojuredocs.org/clojure_core/clojure.core/-%3E [2] http://clojuredocs.org/clojure_core/clojure.core/-%3E%3E

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You can get started with Clojure without Leiningen. You can get started with Scala without SBT. These are build tools for serious projects, with lots of options and lots of things they do for you. Some people recommend them to beginners and while that's not necessarily wise, it goes to show that they are mature and OK enough that some beginners cope with it.

Yes, you can get started easily with Haskell - but then Cabal is such a complete piece of shit that people felt the need for a Haskell distribution with batteries included. And it is my feeling that you're mixing the cause and the effect here.

I agree. If Cabal was as good as Leiningen, then Haskell would has been way more popular than today.

Avoid success at all cost. :)

Leiningen prevents clojure from having the dependency hell problem from the beginning, which haskell was prone to but eventually fixed by sandboxing. Then would you say sandboxing is too heavy for haskell?

Now if by heavy, you mean the folders structure lein generates, then I disagree. Those folders actually keep the task of understanding any lein project easy.

If by heavy, you mean the JVM: You can compile the thing into a jar that runs on any jvm, or a js file using clojurescript. JVM, web browsers and Node.JS are very likable cross-platform layers, and I don't see why binary executable that are OS dependent compares.

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