On Saturday, October 1, 2011 9:34:46 PM UTC-5, David Nolen wrote: > > To give some context: > I appreciate the context, David, and I agree that the change needed to happen. It's likely my fault for not being enough in the loop to realize what the 1.3 change would mean for me. I expected some breakage, but I think I was taken by surprise by how far-reaching it was.
The fact that such important changes needed to happen underscores my point -- which I doubt anybody would disagree with -- about the maturity of the project. I'm sorry if this offends the people who have worked hard to get 1.3 to where it is -- I appreciate all the effort, which is in the right direction. But, somebody has to be that nagging voice of legacy, so I'll let it be me and Arthur. :) Almost no thought at all was given to legacy: the most I saw was a few tips on migrating in the changelog. (Again, could be my fault for not looking hard enough.) I did realize pretty early on that the contribs were not all of prime quality, but what other choice did I have? Fall back to standard JVM API? I did do that in some occasions, but it's awkward. Patch the contribs? I just didn't have the time (nor patience) to reinvent such essential wheels. (I almost did submit a patch for contrib.json... it's somewhere on my todo list from a year ago...) Again, the fact that Clojure didn't and still doesn't have a good standard library (beyond the rock-solid foundation of the JVM) with a full test suite is a sign of the vast amount of work Clojure still has ahead in order to become as widely adopted as it deserves. Stu's comment actually worries me in this respect: the fact that each contrib has its own version may make it easier to evaluate them separately, but it would appear to me as a defeatist goal for Clojure moving forward. What I would want to see is a coherent standard library that is centrally maintained. Not everything deserves to be there, of course, but there are obvious candidates for essentials. Contrarily, it seems that effort is being put into cleaning up the core and jettisoning anything merely suspected of being superfluous. So, what's going to happen to all that stuff outside? Will it be maintained by "the community"? The same "community" that made the 1.2 contrib? Or maybe Clojure 1.5 will bring some of them into the fold? (I'm not being sarcastic; these are honest questions about the possibilities and vision.) Being a hardcore JVMer, I am used to APIs in java.* and javax.* namespaces as a sign of how close to the center and dependable they are. Could something like that be feasible for the Clojure project? Someone on this thread mentioned that it's all as expected, and that Clojure is just for a bunch of geeks, anyway, so breakage is no big deal (I'm paraphrasing). I hope for a strong official position against that: many of us believe Clojure should not be a niche language. It's the first Lisp in decades with broad practical potential and could pave the way for Clojure or other Lisps in more specific niches. The stakes are high: if Clojure is widely adopted and trusted, the quality of software everywhere and for everyone will improve. -- 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
