I’ve not used it in production, but I’ve shipped a few side projects and stuff for family members in it. ClojureScripts React wrapper, Reagent, honestly makes more sense to me than React does. I used Hiccup to generate HTML, and your components are just functions within Hiccups DSL (which is really just lists) and it ends up looking incredibly clean. Static things look static, dynamic things are obviously so, and it felt much less magic than regular React.
The only things I found that felt bad were trying to use non-functional components I found on NPM. It’s not a deal breaker, but the code was ugly. Nothing I couldn’t fix with a wrapper, but some JS libraries are heinously ugly in cljs by default.
The type of code you're writing isn't special, it's the way people have written lots of clojure programs for over a decade.
It’s a breath of fresh air that practically every DSL takes either lists or maps so I can use very similar patterns to build their input rather than “every API wants me to method chain their custom types so every API needs its own special helpers library for common patterns”.
I never realized how much I hate classes until Clojure.
Have you tried typed Clojure? Curious about opinions on that vs having Malli do runtime validation. I tried it when I was a total noob and got overwhelmed. I feel like I have just enough context now to try again, and not sure if it’s nice or the overhead is so high it’s a boondoggle
Yes! The moment for me was when React introduced their notorious useEffect/useState hooks API. It immediately jumped out to me as the wrong API, by making static things dynamic. Reagent was really a breath of fresh air. Reagent was a really nice API, though it somewhat encouraged inefficient code.
Don't imagine. You have any bash scripts your team uses? Rewrite them in Babashka. Start with your own personal scripts first, get a knack for it, feel the benefits (it's not going to be universally better for every case). You have to be very confident about it personally, because people will come for your guidance later.
This is a good strategy for introducing unfamiliar things - pick something less important, rewrite it, let it sit there. If it becomes problematic - easy to revert. If people start liking it, you can add more, and so on.
That's how I sneaked F# in my .net shop years ago - I started writing less important tests in it.
Then I was made aware of Lustre[1], an Elm inspired web framework in Gleam. I have done two small projects in it now and I really enjoy working with both Lustre and Gleam.
I came to the conclusion that the best frontend is no frontend.
