I was searching for a Java alternative for our medical bus product and looked at Scala during summer 2008. I found it was too tied to an object model. The lack of a complete macro system was in my view also a short coming.
I concluded that it was not a significant departure from Java. I really wanted an alternative that shortened the project time line while providing future growth and a better concurrency model. Looked also at Erlang for better concurrency but found it was too "foreign" to the Java world and that we would end up coding a lot more. I then looked at Lisp alternatives running on the JVM and I stepped on Clojure while searching. We now start all our projects using Clojure and thunk down to Spring/Java when needed. It's a hell of a combination up to now :))) In terms of maturity age is not the significant factor. The more complex is the core of your new language, the bigger it is, the harder it it to get it out and stabilize it. Clojure has a small footprint/syntax, is extensible easily and can use the existing Java library base transparently. Stability wise, Clojure has been conceived by one guy, Rich. There is nothing more painful than developing by consensus. Endless discussions, addition bits by bits of new concepts, twisted solutions, .... I believe that a single person should lead the way. Listening to other ideas is fine and integrating the best of them is the way to go but the final decisions have to rest in a single pair of hands otherwise the product becomes chaotic and points in every directions. Luc On Tue, 2009-03-31 at 17:44 +0200, Christian Vest Hansen wrote: > On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 5:20 PM, Chas Emerick <cemer...@snowtide.com> wrote: > > > > We shipped production software built in Scala last year, but likely > > will never do so again given clojure. Our primary motivating factor > > is the degree of complexity in the Scala, but since you're looking for > > "auxiliary" factors: > > > > - clojure has a far richer "ecosystem" -- there's a metric ton of > > community-contributed libraries and lots of people moving in very > > interesting directions. Maybe I missed them, or they've sprung up > > since I moved over to clojure last summer, but I've not seen a lot of > > scala libraries floating around. > > > > - clojure's community is, in general, more friendly, more helpful. > > There are certainly lots of pleasant people in the scala world, too, > > but I've yet to see a pissing match in #clojure, whereas #scala has > > had a number of them (despite the former being more heavily > > populated). I attribute this to the attitudes, demeanor, and near- > > constant presence of Rich and other "core" contributors. > > I find myself caught by surprise by these observations, as Scala has > been covered in the media for a longer period of time. > > I don't know about the availability of 3'rd party libraries, but the > IRC numbers, as of right now, is certainly correct. > > It could be taken to indicate that Clojure has a greater momentum than Scala. > > > > > - The tooling story is roughly equivalent, I think. Neither community > > has a home-run effort, but both have lots of promising contenders for > > various IDEs. > > > > All of the above is obviously, gratuitously IMHO. > > > > - Chas > > > > On Mar 27, 2009, at 4:20 PM, Jon Harrop wrote: > > > >> > >> > >> Can anyone who has tried both of these languages to a decent degree > >> compare > >> them in practical terms? In other words, I am not interested in the > >> technical > >> aspects of the languages themselves (e.g. dynamic vs static typing) > >> but > >> things like IDE support, tools (lexers and parsers), standard > >> libraries, > >> books and their quality, existing commercial applications and the > >> commercial > >> viability of shipping products targeted at their programmers (e.g. > >> libraries)? > >> > >> I've never done anything significant on the JVM so I'm interested in > >> picking > >> one of these two languages and shipping a product for it. I've done > >> a lot of > >> commercial work with F# over the past 2 years but all Microsoft- > >> related sales > >> have died this year so I'm looking to diversify... > >> > >> Many thanks, > >> -- > >> Dr Jon Harrop, Flying Frog Consultancy Ltd. > >> http://www.ffconsultancy.com/?e > >> > >> > > > > > > > > > > > > > Luc Préfontaine Armageddon was yesterday, today we have a real problem... --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Clojure" group. To post to this group, send email to clojure@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/clojure?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
