When I was a kid, I was really into fantasy books and online text-based RPGs. I met some friends through one of those games, and they needed some changes made to their website and forum. Somehow, I ended up working on it. Then I asked my parents to get me a PHP5 book for Christmas. I think I was around 13-14 then. This was one of few programming books I've read thoroughly, although I don't remember anything from it now.
After that I started creating websites, learning HTML and JavaScript. At some point I've found Clojure and functional programming and, immediately, decided it's better than anything else, so I started to learn it.
Mostly, I learned by trying to make something, looking through the internet to find help, and joining some online communities. My parents didn't care much if I was focused on school or not, as long as I was doing something, so I had a lot of time to learn by myself.
In high school programming was one of the leading subjects in my class. There I realized I'm already quite proficient at it. I was not the best in math or physics, but was easily the best in programming.
And so it goes on for about 20 years now. I still mostly learn by doing. I read some programming books, but rarely as thoroughly as my first PHP book.
Clojure is widely used, opinionated, promotes immutability, has lots of libraries and lively community. It is overall great language, really nicely designed, 100% worth using.
If you want the best performance and need to build executables without JVM then SBCL is a better choice, although probably takes longer to learn.
I wrote my fair share of Clojure, SBCL just had a look at.
Although if your executables are script-like, you can use babashka, which lets you write shell scripts in clojure. Good stdlib, full macro support, shell out to other commands, just a great tool.
I love babashka. I could never convince my company to use clojure for a big project, so now I’m exposing all of my coworkers to clojure by making a set of nice specific-to-our-company utilities in babashka.
>Zig, meanwhile, just shrugs and says, "You break it, you fix it."<
Exactly. That’s what Rust defends us from. It makes breaking things way harder. Rust forces you to think differently, you cannot just do what you want, but that’s it’s selling point. The article focuses mainly on feelings not facts and that’s ok, but I don’t feel exhausted writing Rust. I like that it’s safe and I’m happy to sacrifice some freedom if I get safety in return.
That’s a weird article. Rust wanted to be safe systems language and it is. Where’s the issue? Zig has different goals. That’s ok. What are actually discussing here?
I have started programming when I was about 13-14, so it's half of my life now. Honestly, I never wanted to be a programmer. More of a writer/speaker/culture animator. I found Clojure in my first years of learning programming and, from start, it felt, like the only language that was really thought through, before creation. Clojure is the best because its syntax (or lack of thereof) along with data structures, namespaced keywords, specs, and whatnot, allows me to think properly. No other language gives me tools to think so clearly and plainly. I spent lot of time with JavaScript, some Python, some Ruby, a bit of Haskell. None of those really cares about giving you proper tools to think. When I need to use a language different than Clojure it's a burden now because I still think in Clojure. Or: I try to analyze and build a model of my domain without thinking about computers. The best programming language for that is Clojure. Other languages make you think about computers and, for me, that's waisted time
After that I started creating websites, learning HTML and JavaScript. At some point I've found Clojure and functional programming and, immediately, decided it's better than anything else, so I started to learn it. Mostly, I learned by trying to make something, looking through the internet to find help, and joining some online communities. My parents didn't care much if I was focused on school or not, as long as I was doing something, so I had a lot of time to learn by myself.
In high school programming was one of the leading subjects in my class. There I realized I'm already quite proficient at it. I was not the best in math or physics, but was easily the best in programming.
And so it goes on for about 20 years now. I still mostly learn by doing. I read some programming books, but rarely as thoroughly as my first PHP book.