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by stingraycharles 43 days ago
For me it also lacks observability. It has been a few years since I last used Clojure, but I found manifold to be a much better fit for actual production code that you want to optimize.

I loved ztellman’s “everything must flow” talk on the topic.
1 comments
KingMob 43 days ago
Heh, I used to maintain manifold/aleph for a few years after Zach left the Clojure community.
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stingraycharles 43 days ago
That means we have had various exchanges in the past, but I’m operating under a different username here.

I’ve had several PRs accepted into there, I think manifold got a lot of things right, if only it weren’t for Zach leaving the community.

Unfortunately I left the community for similar reasons, I have a different vision of how the language should evolve than the people in charge, but wasn’t as vocal about it. I suspect there are more people like me.

It’s fine, like Rich Hickey said, it’s his project and we have no right to expect anything.

I am forever glad for what Clojure taught me, it made me a much better developer.

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iLemming 43 days ago
> Unfortunately I left the community for similar reasons

AFAIK Zach was just offered well-paying job that was mostly about dealing with Scala, it wasn't about "how the language should evolve"...

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stingraycharles 42 days ago
Zach wanted to introduce a community-driven steering community, make the language easier for beginners to adopt, and standardize library choices.

This did not align with Cognitect’s centralized stewardship.

This was around the time that there was some quite some commotion in the community around this, with Rich posting his infamous “Open source is not about you” conclusive post, which was in direct response to @cemerick’s Twitter post: https://x.com/cemerick/status/1067111260611850240

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iLemming 42 days ago
That was in nov 2018. Two months later Tellman published his "Elements of Clojure". I don't remember the date when he retired from the community. And I don't remember him publicly saying anything about that drama, but I do know for a fact that he joined a team with a ton Scala. How do I know that? Not sure, he might have told someone I know. I might have heard that from him in person, honestly, I don't remember.
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KingMob 42 days ago
I can't speak for Zach, but in 2019 on The REPL podcast #23 (https://www.therepl.net/episodes/23/), at 00:41:01 and 00:45:31, he talks about being a bit unhappy with how the core team communicated about his arity-optimized vec/hash class proposal.

He then talks about Aphyr's and Chas Emerick's similar experiences, and laments how in the earliest days, it was still possible to contribute, and how when core development closed off, it was never articulated up front until "Open Source Is Not About You", which is its own can of worms.

Overall, it's a good and nuanced discussion, but it's obvious he wasn't in unreserved love with the language, so I'm not surprised he left.

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