On Sun, Jul 3, 2016 at 7:25 PM, David McClain <dbm@refined-audiometrics.com> wrote:

Hi Ken,

Not to put too much of a damper on your enthusiasm,

No enthusiasm. As I said, I prefer Common Lisp. You asked if it was a fad, I said "No" and provided the indicators I see.

but can you suggest solid technical reasons for migrating from Common Lisp to Clojure? I don’t do web programming.

No, I prefer CL. I was responding to this from you:

" I’m finding myself being dragged into a “new” world centering on Javascript and prototype based programming. "

So I suggested ClojureScript (if you have that option.)

I do machine control, image processing, DSP audio processing, cryptography research, etc. I have never programmed a web page in my life, and probably never will.

So what is the Javascript for? A node.js app of some kind?

My impressions from a few years ago was that Clojure was another language built for the heck of it, much like Python. Not particularly well designed, under the control of one individual, with lots of cheerleading from the small audience. Perhaps it has now matured?

I just started using it three months ago because I am looking for a job, so I cannot offer much on growth over the years. I do know a few folks now add to the core, and the product is very stable, solid, and mature.

And again, Clojurescript is amazing. Cells is fairly intense and once I had it ported to Clojure it took just a week to get it running on CLJS (most of that do to some source code reorg in re macros forced by the CLJS->JS compilation chain. So in the context of "OMG! Ihave to do JS" I offered my recommendation.

Not that cljs will save you from the prototype model. :)

best, kt