[namelosw]

A little bit off-topic, but I'm really confused that, why people on HN like Clojure and hate JavaScript? I didn't have any analytical data but it's very obvious already to anyone who read HN often. Are they possibly be the same crowd or just independent groups of people?

For me, Clojure and JavaScript (at least for modern React community) are similar when it comes to usage: Dynamic typing with Hash-map centric modeling, use functions to compose thing but mostly without monadic patterns. The methodology in the Clojure community has an official name: "It's just data". This methodology works, and have it's own pros and cons. The obvious pro is people can write generic functions without poking hundreds of nominal types, interfaces and type classes.

The only big difference I see is macro, but Clojure community also doesn't recommend writing macros unless you have to. There are also protocols and types, but they're not encouraged to poke around, it's still map-first recommended across the community.

There are very few language communities follow the "It's just data patterns". From Java to Python to ML, people mostly modeling things with fixed-property model, instead of just untyped maps, unless they have to.

For Lisps, I don't see map-centric approach is that stressed. Scheme might be still list-centric, Common Lisp is more diversed when it comes to approaches.

Why people hate JavaScript so much? And why people speak highly of Clojure? It's just about inconsistent details, or about the whole design itself? Is there any important point I missed?

[sbmassey]

I don't hate any language myself, only the codebases I have to deal with, but Clojure is very different from Javascript in its support for immutability, such that if you want to update values you have to use atoms, agents etc. This goes a long way towards making up for the lack of typing when trying to understand peoples code.

Some people also find the lack of random syntactical noise in Lisp style syntax preferable.

[beders]

I don't think there's a lot of hate. It's just a quirky language that is at the heart of web application development. Based on its history, it has a lot of compromises. And not good ones.

It could be vastly improved with a proper REPL-based development (i.e. think developing within the browser dev tools, kinda, sorta), but instead we are now going the other way: Adding types and a compiler and making it harder to mis-type things, but also harder to work as productively.

I guess overall it has a few more ways on how you can shoot yourself in the foot compared to cljs ;)