I think that backward compatibilities problem do hurt. Some people will not invest in an "unstable" language by default and some will be tempted to give up after experimenting too many problem with it.
We don't choose a language,we choose a full echosystem that include libraries, IDE tooling, documentation, community, long term support. So this is more a question of tradeoff between having the best possible language and breaking or not backward compatibility. But I would say that clojure is not made for the masses. (Java/C# are for that). Clojure is more for geeks/hackers/searchers that love computer science and want a fun language to work with. Clojure core team did a great job ensure that clojure has a good reach in term of platform (JVM, CLR, browsers) and also to bring the best possible language. So the problem should be from what ecosystem, language combination you benefit most. Clojure bring outstanding expressivity and consision to programs. It allow very expressive DSLs and bring interresting concepts toward managing shared state. For me this is more than enough to consider clojure as a very viable alternative. On Sep 29, 2:54 am, Michael Gardner <gardne...@gmail.com> wrote: > > I don't think there will (nor should) ever be a declaration by the core team > that "from this point onward, we will never break backwards compatibility." > There's always a trade-off between maintaining backwards compatibility and > making improvements to the language. Naturally, as the language matures the > tradeoff will shift towards compatibility, but in my opinion it would be > foolish to set anything in stone. I don't think the lack of any such promise > has hurt Python, for example; and while the transition to 3.0 certainly seems > to have been slow and painful, I don't doubt the language will survive. > -- 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 Note that posts from new members are moderated - please be patient with your first post. 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
