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Comment by eudox | Hacker News Reader

When you compare the time fukamachi's spent on these libraries to the time spent on Clack, Caveman, etc., it's pretty clear there's obsession with performance.

As aroman said, "The real story here is that people are working on a number of new libraries/modules/tools for doing web development in CL".

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I didn't mean to imply that the original post was not worthy in anyway whatsoever, in fact I think all of the work he is doing in the CL ecosystem is awesome and I look forward to playing around with it soon in my next CL project.

But apgwoz's general point about how we evaluate software is spot on. In general, I think benchmarks and the like have a sort of "woo"ing effect on people (in the James Randi sense), and we should probably take a few moments to reflect on that before making any major architectural decisions. :)

I agree entirely, but at the same time, I think too often people make social rather than technical decisions. Lots of stars on GitHub and a well-designed website are usually indicative of a good project -- but people put too much faith on CSS, the same way they put too much faith on microbenchmarks taken in laboratory conditions.

I think too often people make social rather than technical decisions

Indeed. It's sad that as engineers (who theoretically espouse logic, reason, and evidence) we still end up making so many decisions based on herd behavior.

This -> people make social rather than technical decisions

Leo Meyerovich did a study on the social factors that affect language adoption[0]. Vivek Haldar has a highlights the salient points[1]. More info at his site: [2]

[0]: http://lmeyerov.github.io/projects/socioplt/papers/oopsla201...

[1]: http://blog.vivekhaldar.com/post/56972066006/empirical-analy...

[2]: http://lmeyerov.github.io/

I would posit that engineers are human creatures rather than robots, and basing decisions on social factors is a natural part of being human.

For my anecdotal experience, apart from JS libs (where style over substance is frequently the norm) I find a well-designed website is usually a sign the project cares about its users, and is more likely to provide good documentation & a space to ask questions.

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