It certainly does seem strange coming from the Java world, where ear files and deployment descriptors can be intimidating. The idea that adding a couple jar files and the source tree to the classpath is 'too hard' makes me wonder what language he was coming from.
I was asked to give a simple 'hands on clojure' thing at a Java users group. I wanted to spend minimal time on environment setup, so I had these java developers put the jars and my starter script in a directory, cd into it, and add . to the classpath. Out of the room of programmers I had one person have trouble getting the starter project to come up pretty much immediately, and whatever his issue was I fixed it in a few seconds. For the record, I downloaded and installed Rebol - took about the same time to get to where I was fiddling with code and not environment as it did when I started clojure. I was puzzled which version to download and had to figure out there was a free version (under 15 sec) 828K download. found a reasonable tutorial immediately, got my first language smell when I discovered that they wanted me to use a built-in editor, quickly got over that when they said most rebol programmers use an external editor. Learning curve - far fewer 'strange' concepts than clojure, I came up pretty fast, but it definitely has a toy language feel. I'm guessing it'd be a lot like programming in visual basic - quick til you need to do something 'off the rails' like handle a UDP stream, then hellish. Looks like another attempt to make an ultra-friendly language at the expense of power - a 'solution' that usually doesn't get you too far. deployment - ok, so rebol looks bad to deploy. You have to install a runtime and give out the source, both probably not very enterprise- solution oriented sysadmin friendly. And the server side example uses CGI, which doesn't pass the smell test. Conclusion - rebol actually might be a reasonable solution for a project I'm talking to the biz guy about. It'd involve a whole bunch of objects in a virtual world that need controlled from some web other end. Rebol has deployment problems, I'll agree, but don't see them as relevant to Clojure. I think our friend's off base. -- 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 To unsubscribe from this group, send email to clojure+unsubscribegooglegroups.com or reply to this email with the words "REMOVE ME" as the subject.
