A History of Clojure [video] (opens in new tab)

(pldi21.org)

99 pointslukashrb4y ago10 comments

10 comments

yingliu42034y ago

It is fun to compare the histories of Clojure, Scala and F#. A pragmatic programmer created Clojure. A university professor created Scala. A research team from Microsoft created F#. Each language is characterized by its creator(s).

grumpyprole4y ago

I find Scala a bit of an anomaly though, yes it was created by a university professor, but it was clearly designed for mass adoption - even down to the curly braces (although they are backtracking that decision now). I have lot of sympathy for this approach, but I think it has also been the underlying cause of many of their problems.

pjmlp4y ago

A university professor that created the Modula-2 compiler sold by Borland, and was one of the Pizza compiler designers, which contributed to Java generics.

Not your regular university professor, rather someone with industry experience, specially in the Java world.

grumpyprole4y ago

You forgot to also mention that he was the original author of the Java 5 compiler which Sun took over. He is definitely not a guy in an ivory tower, almost the exact opposite in fact. But ivory towers are not necessarily bad. It was precisely an ivory table that gave us Lisp and Haskell. Lisp's Garbage Collector was a big influence on the original Java. And Java's chief architect has specifically mentioned Haskell as his influence in the future of Java.

1 more reply

c-cube4y ago

It's almost like academics are normal people who participate in the world, and not monks in an ivory tower like we so often read here!

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dang4y ago

A History of Clojure [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23418699 - June 2020 (374 comments)

mapgrep4y ago

In the q&a with Guy Steele at the end he says one thing he would do differently is integrate transducers more deeply into the language from the beginning, but the concept emerged around the time of core async when they were wary of rewriting map filter reduce etc again for channels (rough paraphrase from memory, watched this a few days ago).

I wonder what that would look like, what core functions would use transducers that do not, and how.

truth_seeker4y ago

The background of the video with music instruments looks cool.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

10 comments

yingliu42034y ago

grumpyprole4y ago

pjmlp4y ago

A university professor that created the Modula-2 compiler sold by Borland, and was one of the Pizza compiler designers, which contributed to Java generics.

Not your regular university professor, rather someone with industry experience, specially in the Java world.

grumpyprole4y ago

1 more reply

c-cube4y ago

It's almost like academics are normal people who participate in the world, and not monks in an ivory tower like we so often read here!

1 more reply

dang4y ago

A History of Clojure [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23418699 - June 2020 (374 comments)

mapgrep4y ago

I wonder what that would look like, what core functions would use transducers that do not, and how.

truth_seeker4y ago

The background of the video with music instruments looks cool.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse