Since I've started my new position where I get to work in clojure, I've been itching to try to get others at my workplace to see where clojure would be useful. Currently, my workplace is a python, java, C and shell workshop (with a smattering of ruby here and there). I'm one of the few engineers at my work where I get to work with clojure.
And that's sad. Unfortunately, a common fear for most companies is the difficulty in finding engineers who are proficient in a certain technology stack. I quite frankly find that a rather lame excuse. Any engineer worth their salt should be able to learn a new language. And in fact, I'd rather hire engineers who have a mind curious enough to learn a not-hot language with a very different paradigm. If management's concern is that they want an engineer to "hit the ground running", I think they are sacrificing short term gains for long term benefits. I used to work at a company that decided to use perl for all its scripting efforts, and they wound up having many perl "camps" where engineers spent an entire week going through intensive perl training. If there are companies that make a living teaching new languages, why not take advantage of that? So when I hear managers claim that the lack of engineers with the skill to program in clojure is a detriment, I find that as a weak excuse.
There's also the odd paradox that some companies don't seem to be so concerned about other new "hot" langauges like Go or Swift. Perhaps it's because those two languages are backed by the giants Google and Apple respectively, and so therefore, they must have gotten something right. Personally, having had a cursory glance at Go and Swift, I've found nothing particularly outstanding about them compared to other new languages without the hotness (clojure, elixir, rust, elm or julia for example).
So what can we clojurians do to help others understand where clojure could be a viable alternative? I think we need to do several things:
And that's sad. Unfortunately, a common fear for most companies is the difficulty in finding engineers who are proficient in a certain technology stack. I quite frankly find that a rather lame excuse. Any engineer worth their salt should be able to learn a new language. And in fact, I'd rather hire engineers who have a mind curious enough to learn a not-hot language with a very different paradigm. If management's concern is that they want an engineer to "hit the ground running", I think they are sacrificing short term gains for long term benefits. I used to work at a company that decided to use perl for all its scripting efforts, and they wound up having many perl "camps" where engineers spent an entire week going through intensive perl training. If there are companies that make a living teaching new languages, why not take advantage of that? So when I hear managers claim that the lack of engineers with the skill to program in clojure is a detriment, I find that as a weak excuse.
There's also the odd paradox that some companies don't seem to be so concerned about other new "hot" langauges like Go or Swift. Perhaps it's because those two languages are backed by the giants Google and Apple respectively, and so therefore, they must have gotten something right. Personally, having had a cursory glance at Go and Swift, I've found nothing particularly outstanding about them compared to other new languages without the hotness (clojure, elixir, rust, elm or julia for example).
So what can we clojurians do to help others understand where clojure could be a viable alternative? I think we need to do several things:
- Point out how language X has certain weaknesses that could be resolved with clojure
- Point out how clojure can live synergistically with a Java ecosystem
- Help train and educate others that lisps aren't as scary/gross as they think
- Get people familiar with the tools and ecosystem of clojure
For example, I hope to release a set of tutorials to help compare and contrast how clojure could solve problems more elegantly than python. It would cover things like how to do highly concurrent programs in comparison with python and how immutability can help make more robust programs. I'd also show how python decorators, which are sometimes compared to lisp macros, fail to deliver the same power of a lisp-style macro.
Another topic that I don't see discussed too much, is how to integrate clojure with legacy java projects. I'd like to create some articles talking about how to use TestNG with clojure, how gen-class really works, and how to plug clojure into a maven or gradle based program. I'd also like to give more examples on how to use java interop constructs, including defprotocols, proxy and using them to bridge java and clojure.
Another hinderance is, IMHO, purely psychological. I find people's first reactions to lisp syntax somewhat amusing. It's such an immediate and almost visceral reaction that I have to truly wonder why lisp syntax is so (initially) despised by so many. Is it perhaps because there is a relationship between lisp syntax and XML (and people hate XML)? I remember my first reaction to lisp in college and I was just like "whoaaaa". But I also remember my first reaction to python's syntax where white space mattered was like, "who the hell thought having white space matter was a good thing!!". But after about 3 weeks, I didn't even notice it anymore. And the same thing happened with me with clojure. But how do you get people to even try clojure for 3-4 weeks?
Finally, another big barrier for people coming to clojure is the tools and ecosystem. For starters, a large chunk of tutorials and videos you will see online use emacs + CIDER as the IDE. I basically started learning emacs about 3 years ago in order to do clojure. Now, I'm an older guy, so I'm not afraid of basic text editors unlike some young whipper-snappers who seem to be at a loss without a full fledged IDE. Now for Java programming I do enjoy something like IntelliJ or Eclipse, but emacs is a pretty cool IDE for clojure. While there is a plugin for vim and clojure, the majority of the community does work with emacs. There's another interesting IDE called cursive which is supposed to have the ability to debug both clojure and java code which would come in handy.
Beyond the IDE, there's build tools, and so coming to grips with leiningen and perhaps boot would be useful. Also, if you don't have any background in Java, while it's not absolutely necessary to know clojure, it will definitely help (the same is true if you don't really know javascript, but want to know clojurescript). So some familiarity with the underlying runtime (the JVM or javascript engine) will go a long way to making you a better clojurian.
Another hinderance is, IMHO, purely psychological. I find people's first reactions to lisp syntax somewhat amusing. It's such an immediate and almost visceral reaction that I have to truly wonder why lisp syntax is so (initially) despised by so many. Is it perhaps because there is a relationship between lisp syntax and XML (and people hate XML)? I remember my first reaction to lisp in college and I was just like "whoaaaa". But I also remember my first reaction to python's syntax where white space mattered was like, "who the hell thought having white space matter was a good thing!!". But after about 3 weeks, I didn't even notice it anymore. And the same thing happened with me with clojure. But how do you get people to even try clojure for 3-4 weeks?
Finally, another big barrier for people coming to clojure is the tools and ecosystem. For starters, a large chunk of tutorials and videos you will see online use emacs + CIDER as the IDE. I basically started learning emacs about 3 years ago in order to do clojure. Now, I'm an older guy, so I'm not afraid of basic text editors unlike some young whipper-snappers who seem to be at a loss without a full fledged IDE. Now for Java programming I do enjoy something like IntelliJ or Eclipse, but emacs is a pretty cool IDE for clojure. While there is a plugin for vim and clojure, the majority of the community does work with emacs. There's another interesting IDE called cursive which is supposed to have the ability to debug both clojure and java code which would come in handy.
Beyond the IDE, there's build tools, and so coming to grips with leiningen and perhaps boot would be useful. Also, if you don't have any background in Java, while it's not absolutely necessary to know clojure, it will definitely help (the same is true if you don't really know javascript, but want to know clojurescript). So some familiarity with the underlying runtime (the JVM or javascript engine) will go a long way to making you a better clojurian.
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