On Jul 3, 2:26 am, Mark Engelberg <mark.engelb...@gmail.com> wrote: > Ideally, I was hoping to start a more in-depth discussion about the > pros and cons of "programming in the large" in Clojure than just > waxing poetic about Clojure/Lisp's capabilities in the abstract :)
I am yet to do a large program in clojure, I still need to be convinced in the "ok, so far so good, but where is this going?" but I have this to say: large programs are primarily an architectural and secondarily a managerial/organizational concern, not a language issue, and large programs have been my prime driving consideration over the years. In terms of "where is this going?", I would be quite concerned if the clojure community develops an unreasonably negative attitude towards OO (I don't believe Rich Hickey himself has a negative attitude, I believe his attitude is reasonable and balanced) and, on the other hand, believes it would "do well to learn from the oral histories of the early days of Ruby". Well, I believe it would do well to learn from Ruby, but as a cautionary tale. All those little niggling issues you mention cause me no worry, either they could be worked around - or perhaps even properly understood - or they're easily fixable as the language implementation/tools mature, with the exception of "in large part because failures usually occur within close proximity of the flaw that triggered the failure"; I mentioned some concerns I had about datatypes/protocols, I'm yet to make my mind up on that, in particular with regard to "failures usually occur within close proximity of the flaw", I still need to study them more. I wish the Clojure community to learn from two sources. 1) Java itself, and in particular what is happening with the service component architecture (SCA). Clojure makes those good engineering practices of services and contracts feasible for a small team or even an individual developer. I'm not saying that clojure would necessarily work with those frameworks, for that I believe Scala is better positioned, but I believe clojure should be mindful of what's happening there, as I believe that to be the biggest threat and hurdle Clojure faces in terms of its enterprise utility and adoption. The Service Component Architecture is incredibly well thought out, and it already has industry titans singed up to it. 2) RDF/OWL, or otherwise called the resource oriented architecture, or the global giant graph. I believe if clojure plays it cards well then that - the semantic web - could be its killer application. This too is a well thought out and compelling architecture, and I believe Clojure is uniquely well positioned for it. -- 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
