Simon El Nahas

Simon El Nahas

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Why You Should Learn Clojure

What is Clojure?

Lisp (List Programming) was invented by John McCarthy in 1958. Clojure compiles both to the JVM (Java Virtual Machine) and JavaScript. Clojure and Lisp will be used interchangeably throughout this article.

How I found Clojure

Paul Graham graduated with a Ph.D. in programming languages from Harvard in 1990. He then went on to start ViaWeb in 1995 and sold it to Yahoo in 1998 for 49M USD. But he has probably made the biggest impact by co-founding and leading Y Combinator, which is the most successful startup accelerator with a lead count of over 25 unicorn companies. In other words, he had my attention. So I decided to read his book Hackers and Painters. Apart from describing why nerds are unpopular, he also describes the benefits Lisp gave his startup in a very intellectual and entertaining way. This was my first encounter with the language and Paul Graham had succeeded in getting me curious about it.

Robert C. Martin more commonly known as Uncle Bob co-authored the agile manifesto, which shaped an entire industry. Later he published several books on software craftsmanship and is still more than 20 years later a leader in the software industry for best practices with Clean Code as his mantra. Uncle Bob has written several blog posts on Clojure, but most profound is his statement here:

My favorite language of all, the language that I think will outlast all the others, the language that I believe will eventually become the standard language that all programmers use... is Lisp.

—Why Clojure by Uncle Bob

As I dove deeper to find companies using Clojure Today, I realized that RoamResearch, Pitch, and Shortcut (formerly Clubhouse)–which all had sprung up lately–all were using it as their core technology.

Highest paid developers

Having the skills of the future can be tough in the present moment if those skills aren't in demand. But luckily this is not the case with Clojure. In fact, Clojure is the highest paying language according to StackOverflow's Developer Surveys.

Dynamic typing

From Dynamic to Static and back to Dynamic typing

I had recently gone from JavaScript which is a dynamically typed language to TypeScript which adds static typing to JavaScript. So when I realized that Clojure was dynamically typed I was at first quite skeptical. With TypeScript and other static languages, we get a lot of help in preventing run-time bugs. But static typing becomes a problem when the compiler prevents experimentation, then we wrestle the compiler to satisfy type constraints. Since Clojure itself can be extended with macros it doesn't have to be part of the core language, but when needed it can be implemented or imported with a library such as clojure.spec.

Use TDD not static typing

The developer knows best when to do which checks and tests. This can't be predicted by a compiler since the most accurate representation of the program's intended behavior is stored in the mind of the programmer. Therefore when the programmer describes the intended behavior with tests–types become obsolete:

You see, when a Java programmer gets used to TDD, they start asking themselves a very important question: “Why am I wasting time satisfying the type constraints of Java when my unit tests are already checking everything?” Those programmers begin to realize that they could become much more productive by switching to a dynamically typed language

—TypeWars by Uncle Bob

REPL driven development

With REPL driven development small parts of the code (all the way down to each expression/form) are run in isolation similar to creating several small unit tests before adding the function to the bigger program. In this way, we can test our units, before putting them together. Similar to how you would smell a strawberry before adding it into a smoothie. The focus is on shortening the feedback loop by seeing the result of changes in the code immediately.

See an entertaining example here of REPL driven development (also referred to as interactive programming) with the beloved flappy bird.

Macros

Macros make it possible to write code that writes code. Doing this one can extend the language to suit the specific problem at hand, where in other languages you would have to wait for a new version of the language to introduce the needed feature. In the previous example, I explained how this could be applied to add type checks.

Another example of this is in JavaScript where async await was introduced in ECMAScript 2017, developers could finally simplify a lot of their code. In Clojure this could be implemented as a macro. In fact they already had and were using this functionality (core.async and go) long before async await was published, as it can be seen in this talk by David Nolen.

Similarly, I have previously enjoyed using F# or OCaml's match statements, which is not a part of the core Clojure language. But luckily it can be imported as a macro and be used in programs on equal grounds as all other Clojure keywords. This is not possible in other languages. See Sam Tobin-Hochstadts publication about match on arXiv.org here.

FP vs OO

Clojure is a functional programming language, but it also has polymorphism. This means that if you are coming from OO you don't have to leave polymorphism behind.

OO and FP are orthogonal, they are not mutually exclusive.

—FP vs OO by Uncle Bob

Clojure can be used anywhere

Clojure is running on Java's JVM and is mostly used for backend services, whereas ClojureScript compiles to JavaScript and is mostly used for the frontend together with React through a thin wrapper called Reagent. ClojureScript is almost equal to Clojure, unlike JavaScript that is distant from Java. This makes Clojure the most practical language to learn since it obtains the biggest reach of any language by combining the reach of Java and JavaScript.

Does it deliver?

Since Clojure ticked all my boxes on paper I decided to learn it and test it out first hand. Even if I didn't end up liking it, I'm sure some of the concepts could be usable in other contexts and make me a better programmer in general.

I went through the book on www.learn-clojurescript.com recommended by Conor White-Sullivan CEO & Founder of RoamResearch. Then I decided to try it out on my own. Implementing a simple TicTacToe game I was very impressed by the succinctness of the language and REPL driven development made it super fast to experiment with potential solutions. Clojure had passed my initial tests and my confidence in the language had grown tremendously.

Shortly after this experience I was co-founding the startup MoveNation as the CTO. It was time to decide on the tech stack. Read my exploration on the topic in Clojure as a Competitive Advantage.

References

LISP prehistory - Summer 1956 through Summer 1958 by John McCarthy

The state of a program and its uses. Ph.D. Dissertation. by Paul Graham

Y Combinator Top Companies List

Hackers & Painters by Paul Graham

Why Clojure by Uncle Bob

TypeWars by Uncle Bob

The New Normal: Everything Relies on Sharp Tools by Michael Nygard

Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2021

Everything I Have Learned I Have Learned From Someone Else by David Nolen

Interactive programming Flappy Bird in ClojureScript - YouTube

Extensible Pattern Matching in an Extensible Language by Sam Tobin-Hochstadt

Thanks to the following great people for reading drafts and providing comments on this: