Re: [OT] Convincing others about Clojure
On 26/06/2009, at 8:55 PM, Baishampayan Ghose wrote:
> Well, the guy is a real startup veteran. I explained to him with some
> help from a bunch of Paul Graham essays that we want to use Clojure
> just
> because it is "practically" more suitable for the problem at hand and
> not because we are academically inclined Lisp purists.
Good to hear you could convince your advisor. If you ever need to
defend yourself against claims that Clojure is for academic Lisp
purists, show'em this: http://www.loper-os.org/?p=42
("...Clojure is the False Lisp, which Reeketh of the Cube Farm...")
It seems that not every "real" academic Lisp purist likes Clojure all
that much :)
disclaimer: I consider myself academically inclined, but I'm also a
professional software developer with deadlines.
I love Clojure both in theory and practice!
cheers,
gert
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Re: [OT] Convincing others about Clojure
> We are hiring; but do you live in Mumbai, India? :) no, but i do know some folks around there (although they are all happy where they are, as far as i know). do you allow telecommuting from usa? ;-) best of luck with the venture. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ 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 -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: [OT] Convincing others about Clojure
Raoul Duke wrote: >> He, being a fairly intelligent and pragmatic man, accepted my logic. > > "dibs!", i would sincerely very much like to hook up with your > advisers and investors when i start my company! i mean, that sounded > like an all-too-reasonable experience! :-) > > (so, you hiring?) We are hiring; but do you live in Mumbai, India? :) Regards, BG -- Baishampayan Ghose oCricket.com signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [OT] Convincing others about Clojure
> He, being a fairly intelligent and pragmatic man, accepted my logic. "dibs!", i would sincerely very much like to hook up with your advisers and investors when i start my company! i mean, that sounded like an all-too-reasonable experience! :-) (so, you hiring?) sincerely. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ 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 -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: [OT] Convincing others about Clojure
Thats great to hear, hope everything goes well, let us know how it turns out! Best regards, agc On Fri, Jun 26, 2009 at 1:55 AM, Baishampayan Ghose wrote: > Laurent, > > > Out of curiosity, which (combination of) advice do you think 'closed the > > deal' ? > > Well, the guy is a real startup veteran. I explained to him with some > help from a bunch of Paul Graham essays that we want to use Clojure just > because it is "practically" more suitable for the problem at hand and > not because we are academically inclined Lisp purists. > > I just needed to convince him that I am not religious about using _some_ > Lisp but I am choosing Clojure because as an Engineer I think that would > give us a distinct edge against the competitors. > > And the fact that Clojure runs on the JVM and has direct access to Java > libs helped the case. > > He, being a fairly intelligent and pragmatic man, accepted my logic. > > Thanks a bunch guys. > > Regards, > BG > > -- > Baishampayan Ghose > oCricket.com > > --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ 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 -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: [OT] Convincing others about Clojure
Laurent, > Out of curiosity, which (combination of) advice do you think 'closed the > deal' ? Well, the guy is a real startup veteran. I explained to him with some help from a bunch of Paul Graham essays that we want to use Clojure just because it is "practically" more suitable for the problem at hand and not because we are academically inclined Lisp purists. I just needed to convince him that I am not religious about using _some_ Lisp but I am choosing Clojure because as an Engineer I think that would give us a distinct edge against the competitors. And the fact that Clojure runs on the JVM and has direct access to Java libs helped the case. He, being a fairly intelligent and pragmatic man, accepted my logic. Thanks a bunch guys. Regards, BG -- Baishampayan Ghose oCricket.com signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [OT] Convincing others about Clojure
Hi, Out of curiosity, which (combination of) advice do you think 'closed the deal' ? Regards, -- Laurent 2009/6/26 Baishampayan Ghose > Hello, > > Wow! Thanks a lot for the awesome advice. > > Thank you Konrad, Daniel, Berlin, Jonah, Raoul and others for the > fantastic tips. > > I have, in-fact been able to convince our advisor about using Clojure. > This won't have been possible without your help. > > Clojure, the language and the community rocks. > > Now to get down to implementing the plan. > > Regards, > BG > > -- > Baishampayan Ghose > oCricket.com > > --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ 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 -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: [OT] Convincing others about Clojure
Hello, Wow! Thanks a lot for the awesome advice. Thank you Konrad, Daniel, Berlin, Jonah, Raoul and others for the fantastic tips. I have, in-fact been able to convince our advisor about using Clojure. This won't have been possible without your help. Clojure, the language and the community rocks. Now to get down to implementing the plan. Regards, BG -- Baishampayan Ghose oCricket.com signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [OT] Convincing others about Clojure
I'm no expert but I love to argue, so this is what I would say: On Wed, Jun 24, 2009 at 10:59 PM, Baishampayan Ghose wrote: > > > Their concerns are thus: > > 1. How do you get Clojure programmers? Lisp is not for the faint hearted. There has been a lot of re-newed interest in lisp over the past couple years. > > > 2. What about the performance of Clojure? Is it fast? >From what I've heard and seen it is as fast as java itself in some cases because it sits natively on-top of the jvm 3. People who want to use this are more academically inclined and are > not practical. This will make the whole project fail. Rich Hicky, is a self described "practitioner" not an academic, and I think it is because of this that clojure is at its heart a very pragmatic language (for example: clojure is functional but doesn't enforce strict purity) and not just another intelectual exercise. I'm not trying to knock Simon Peyton Jones (the academic behind Haskel, the man is undoubtedly a genious), I'm simply saying clojure comes from a different angle. The reasons to chose clojure: 1. functional languages are the future, in a few years absolutely everything (even cellphones) will be multicore 2. sits on the jvm, a robust and open platform with access to thousands of librarys 3. a lisp --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ 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 -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: [OT] Convincing others about Clojure
> I need some pointers on this. This is a really crucial thing for me and > any help will be appreciated. http://weblog.raganwald.com/2007/01/what-ive-learned-from-sales-part-i.html sincerely. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ 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 -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: [OT] Convincing others about Clojure
FWIW, two points- Paul Graham, among others, has talked about issues like this. See for instance (about Python): http://www.paulgraham.com/pypar.html The argument about using new technologies in the startup context is generally that smarter people want to work with better tools at higher levels of abstraction. Those people are naturally harder to find, but a way to attract them is to use tools that can give very skilled people more leverage. Relatedly, being concerned about supporting the technology with commodity skills is something for the future owners of your startup to care about, not you. That said, delivery risk with new technologies is *always* a concern. So the other point is- sometimes you can address concerns about "risky" choices obliquely by raising *your own* concerns about those choices, to redirect the conversation to areas that make sense to you. This indicates that *you're* thinking about what they're thinking about, and maybe you have a different take on what the risks are- but that you're thinking about it means you're going to takes steps to mitigate the risks and keep the channels of communication open. My main concern about using Clojure wouldn't have to do with people or performance or academic/business focus, it would just have to do with maturity, not so much of the language, more at the level of application patterns. To that end, were I starting a project, I'd look for skilled Java people with some Lisp, and approach Clojure not as a Lisp, but as a better Spring, and use the patterns from Spring to minimize delivery risk. Focus mostly on creating performance sensitive stateless components + interfaces in Java, using non-bean generic data structures, and do the configuration wiring/lifecycle/dataflow stuff in Clojure. More work, but safer ramp-up. Then I'd go deeper into Lispifying a subsystem. $0.02. On Thu, Jun 25, 2009 at 1:59 AM, Baishampayan Ghose wrote: > Hello, > > So I have been a Common Lisp user for quite sometime and at my earlier > work we managed to build a state-of-the-art Travel portal in CL with a > very small team of CL programmers. > > This was all fine except one thing. The management never really believed > in Lisp and they eventually replaced the whole Lisp team with 3x Java > programmers and are now rewriting the perfectly fine system in Java. > > That was my earlier job. > > Now I am at the moment doing a startup and I was thinking of using > Clojure because it has the best of both the worlds. It can use Java > libs, is a Lisp and is heavily geared towards concurrent programming; > making it one of the most modern and pragmatic programming languages at > the moment. > > This decision was based purely on the merit of Clojure and not because I > just wanted to do some Lisp programming. I seriously believe that > Clojure can really help us in building the kind of concurrent > application we want to build. > > But then, there is another problem. The advisors of the current startup > (who were techies in their time, but now are highly successful people in > the Silicon Valley) reacted strongly to the word "Lisp" (it apparently > brought back old memories of their AI class in college) and are not > "convinced enough" about Clojure. > > I tried explaining that Clojure runs on the JVM and thus won't have any > problem with libs or integrating with existing Java apps but they are > not happy. > > Their concerns are thus: > > 1. How do you get Clojure programmers? Lisp is not for the faint hearted. > > 2. What about the performance of Clojure? Is it fast? > > 3. People who want to use this are more academically inclined and are > not practical. This will make the whole project fail. > > I need some pointers on this. This is a really crucial thing for me and > any help will be appreciated. > > Regards, > BG > > -- > Baishampayan Ghose > oCricket.com > > --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ 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 -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: [OT] Convincing others about Clojure
BG, This kind of thing really burns me up. They trust you to implement the thing, but they don't trust you enough to pick the tools to implement the thing with. It's like telling your plumber what kind of pipes and wrenches to use. You wouldn't dare, unless you were a plumber already. The problem with trying to figure out how to convince them is that it assumes they're rational, but if they were rational, they would just trust you or hire someone else they trust more. Oftentimes our web clients call us up to complain about the color of the website, so we change it. The color is about the only thing about their websites that they actually understand, so it's the thing they have to gripe about—it gives them the feeling they are really in control. I bet that's all these "advisors" want, is to feel like they're in control of you. If any of us were particularly good at this kind of manipulation game, we would be terrible programmers, wouldn't we? Computers are easy to control, you just tell them what to do, but with people you have to do all of this irrational stuff. :) I have two ideas. The first one is to try to change the focus from the language to something else about the system which is about as important to you as the color. Then give them full control over that detail. It'll be annoying and frustrating (they *will* insist on changing it randomly during development), but if it works at least you'll get to program in Clojure and get it done faster. My second idea is to somehow paint selecting Clojure as a form of rebellion, that it raises the stakes a little but ultimately the reward will be a product which gets to market faster, is easier to change, and requires fewer programmers in the first place. In other words, to paint them as going off the beaten path, taking a (calculated) risk and that they're sexier people if they take it and boring if they don't. After all, if everyone went with the flow, there would never be a breakthrough, and that's what startups are all about. There are plenty of excellent technical reasons which others have pointed out, but I think it would probably be easier to win them over with style or by granting them some other kind of control, or both. On Jun 24, 2009, at 11:59 PM, Baishampayan Ghose wrote: > Hello, > > So I have been a Common Lisp user for quite sometime and at my earlier > work we managed to build a state-of-the-art Travel portal in CL with a > very small team of CL programmers. > > This was all fine except one thing. The management never really > believed > in Lisp and they eventually replaced the whole Lisp team with 3x Java > programmers and are now rewriting the perfectly fine system in Java. > > That was my earlier job. > > Now I am at the moment doing a startup and I was thinking of using > Clojure because it has the best of both the worlds. It can use Java > libs, is a Lisp and is heavily geared towards concurrent programming; > making it one of the most modern and pragmatic programming languages > at > the moment. > > This decision was based purely on the merit of Clojure and not > because I > just wanted to do some Lisp programming. I seriously believe that > Clojure can really help us in building the kind of concurrent > application we want to build. > > But then, there is another problem. The advisors of the current > startup > (who were techies in their time, but now are highly successful > people in > the Silicon Valley) reacted strongly to the word "Lisp" (it apparently > brought back old memories of their AI class in college) and are not > "convinced enough" about Clojure. > > I tried explaining that Clojure runs on the JVM and thus won't have > any > problem with libs or integrating with existing Java apps but they are > not happy. > > Their concerns are thus: > > 1. How do you get Clojure programmers? Lisp is not for the faint > hearted. > > 2. What about the performance of Clojure? Is it fast? > > 3. People who want to use this are more academically inclined and are > not practical. This will make the whole project fail. > > I need some pointers on this. This is a really crucial thing for me > and > any help will be appreciated. > > Regards, > BG > > -- > Baishampayan Ghose > oCricket.com > — Daniel Lyons --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ 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 -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: [OT] Convincing others about Clojure
> I need some pointers on this. This is a really crucial thing for me and > any help will be appreciated. Here's one - better warn them not to let on what the startup is. Someone here will get it to market an order of magnitude quicker than they will on some other platform :-). On Thu, Jun 25, 2009 at 7:59 AM, Baishampayan Ghose wrote: > Hello, > > So I have been a Common Lisp user for quite sometime and at my earlier > work we managed to build a state-of-the-art Travel portal in CL with a > very small team of CL programmers. > > This was all fine except one thing. The management never really believed > in Lisp and they eventually replaced the whole Lisp team with 3x Java > programmers and are now rewriting the perfectly fine system in Java. > > That was my earlier job. > > Now I am at the moment doing a startup and I was thinking of using > Clojure because it has the best of both the worlds. It can use Java > libs, is a Lisp and is heavily geared towards concurrent programming; > making it one of the most modern and pragmatic programming languages at > the moment. > > This decision was based purely on the merit of Clojure and not because I > just wanted to do some Lisp programming. I seriously believe that > Clojure can really help us in building the kind of concurrent > application we want to build. > > But then, there is another problem. The advisors of the current startup > (who were techies in their time, but now are highly successful people in > the Silicon Valley) reacted strongly to the word "Lisp" (it apparently > brought back old memories of their AI class in college) and are not > "convinced enough" about Clojure. > > I tried explaining that Clojure runs on the JVM and thus won't have any > problem with libs or integrating with existing Java apps but they are > not happy. > > Their concerns are thus: > > 1. How do you get Clojure programmers? Lisp is not for the faint hearted. > > 2. What about the performance of Clojure? Is it fast? > > 3. People who want to use this are more academically inclined and are > not practical. This will make the whole project fail. > > I need some pointers on this. This is a really crucial thing for me and > any help will be appreciated. > > Regards, > BG > > -- > Baishampayan Ghose > oCricket.com > > --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ 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 -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: [OT] Convincing others about Clojure
On Thu, 25 Jun 2009 11:29:24 +0530 Baishampayan Ghose wrote: > > Their concerns are thus: > > 1. How do you get Clojure programmers? Lisp is not for the faint > hearted. You can always ask on this list. I'd guess that at any given point in time there are probably several people who'd rather being working with Clojure in their day job than whatever they're actually doing now. (Me, for instance...) > 2. What about the performance of Clojure? Is it fast? It can be faster than a lot of other popular choices, like Ruby or Python. I wish it compiled to native code instead of Java, but that's mostly because I don't like Java. > 3. People who want to use this are more academically inclined and are > not practical. This will make the whole project fail. Many innovative ideas in computer science tend to in academia and only slowly make their way into more mainstream, practical environments. Consider garbage collection, or relational databases. Both very "academic" at one time, and now they're everywhere. Point being, really practical people use the best ideas they can, regardless of where they came from. Nathan --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ 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 -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: [OT] Convincing others about Clojure
Konrad Hinsen wrote: > You could try to point out real-life programs that were written in > Lisp, including Clojure. Thanks Konrad. Can you point out some Clojure success stories that I can quote? I know about Stuart's AltLaw.org. Anything else that is documented or can be seen? Regards, BG -- Baishampayan Ghose oCricket.com signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [OT] Convincing others about Clojure
On 25.06.2009, at 07:59, Baishampayan Ghose wrote: > Their concerns are thus: > > 1. How do you get Clojure programmers? Lisp is not for the faint > hearted. No idea on that one... > 2. What about the performance of Clojure? Is it fast? Define "fast"! It all depends on what you do... I'd reply that you can always fall back to Java for time-critical stuff. That's probably a more reassuring answer than numbers that are hard to check and that are very probably not relevant to your specific application domain. > 3. People who want to use this are more academically inclined and are > not practical. This will make the whole project fail. That's a stereotype, so it's hard to argue against. It starts by making the hypothesis that there is an opposition bewteen "academic" and "practical", which I think is wrong. It then goes on by assuming, probably without any basis, that programmers who like Lisp are in the "academic" category. You could try to point out real-life programs that were written in Lisp, including Clojure. Konrad. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ 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 -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
[OT] Convincing others about Clojure
Hello, So I have been a Common Lisp user for quite sometime and at my earlier work we managed to build a state-of-the-art Travel portal in CL with a very small team of CL programmers. This was all fine except one thing. The management never really believed in Lisp and they eventually replaced the whole Lisp team with 3x Java programmers and are now rewriting the perfectly fine system in Java. That was my earlier job. Now I am at the moment doing a startup and I was thinking of using Clojure because it has the best of both the worlds. It can use Java libs, is a Lisp and is heavily geared towards concurrent programming; making it one of the most modern and pragmatic programming languages at the moment. This decision was based purely on the merit of Clojure and not because I just wanted to do some Lisp programming. I seriously believe that Clojure can really help us in building the kind of concurrent application we want to build. But then, there is another problem. The advisors of the current startup (who were techies in their time, but now are highly successful people in the Silicon Valley) reacted strongly to the word "Lisp" (it apparently brought back old memories of their AI class in college) and are not "convinced enough" about Clojure. I tried explaining that Clojure runs on the JVM and thus won't have any problem with libs or integrating with existing Java apps but they are not happy. Their concerns are thus: 1. How do you get Clojure programmers? Lisp is not for the faint hearted. 2. What about the performance of Clojure? Is it fast? 3. People who want to use this are more academically inclined and are not practical. This will make the whole project fail. I need some pointers on this. This is a really crucial thing for me and any help will be appreciated. Regards, BG -- Baishampayan Ghose oCricket.com signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
