As for whether Clojure would work in a large corporate environment (or for large software), I think that's more a function of the internal politics of the organization. Many managers, understandably, go with a technology with heavy library support and lots of developers. The common critique that Lisp isn't practical in industry, comes from that position. But Clojure, sitting atop the JVM, doesn't have that problem.
Lisp was originally developed to build an AI system. So Clojure (a Lisp) is, in my opinion, a superior way to develop any size of program. I won't enumerate Clojure's many technical features and attributes. Just recall that computers are essentially heavy paper weights without software. And software is essentially functions and the manipulation of data. These companies<http://clojure02.managed.contegix.com/display/community/Clojure+Success+Stories> have all successfully used Clojure in medium to large projects. And Ray Kuzweil finds Lisp to be ideally suited to build a "mind"<http://singularityhub.com/2010/12/21/ray-kurzweil-the-mind-and-how-to-build-one-video/> . OO, alternatively, is not at all practical. It was developed in the 60s, as a way to modularize (data abstraction, encapsulation, etc) large programs. The goal was maintainable and re-usable chunks of code. But we've seen the downsides of the OO paradigm, including: i) excessive overhead and ceremony, ii) software systems don't always fit into an Object world view, and iii) Rich Hickey's critique that OO is bad at representing time. Tim On Sat, Jul 2, 2011 at 3:33 PM, Mark Engelberg <[email protected]>wrote: > On Sat, Jul 2, 2011 at 12:21 PM, James Keats <[email protected]> > wrote: > > A very recent quote by Abelson is relevant: > > "One of the things I’m learning here (Google) is the experience of > > working on these enormous programs. I just never experienced that > > before. Previously a large program to me was a hundred pages or > > something. Now that’s a tiny, little thing." > > In your post, you talk about a certain naivete among Lispers about its > practicality in industry, explain that python and java benefit from > their added restrictions, and then offer up the above quote by > Abelson. But you never really tie these observations back to Clojure. > So I want to ask explicitly, do you think Clojure is suitable for > these sorts of really large programs? Why or why not? > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google > Groups "Clojure" group. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected] > Note that posts from new members are moderated - please be patient with > your first post. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected] > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/clojure?hl=en -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Clojure" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] Note that posts from new members are moderated - please be patient with your first post. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/clojure?hl=en
