Curated Picks

In January 2018, a ClojureVerse discussion surfaced Eric Normand's tweet questioning whether Clojure offered compelling web development advantages. Community members attributed adoption barriers to tooling complexity (setup friction, fragmented documentation, learning curves requiring JVM/JS expertise), paradigm unfamiliarity (functional programming and structural editing presented friction for developers from imperative/OO backgrounds), and communication failures (inability to articulate benefits, lack of "batteries-included" frameworks comparable to Rails).

In October 2017, a thread on ClojureVerse questioned whether Clojure's appeal skewing toward "grumpy old programmers" reflected an outreach issue, noting the low number of beginners showing up at conferences after a decade of availability. Much of the discussion centered on tooling friction, especially the complexity of getting a usable IDE setup, typically involving IntelliJ with Cursive or a nontrivial Emacs configuration. One newcomer described spending days just getting builds working, in contrast to other languages that were usable within minutes.

The thread also touched on whether ClojureScript was mature enough to warrant more active outreach to JavaScript developers. At the time, platforms like Egghead.io offered extensive React and Elm material, but no ClojureScript courses, reinforcing its relative invisibility.

In a 2015 analysis, Eric Sink applied Geoffrey Moore's "crossing the chasm" model to F#'s adoption, arguing the language remained confined to early adopters. He attributed this stagnation not to technical deficiencies but to pragmatist developers' herd mentality, which prioritizes predictable, widely-used tools like C# over superior but unproven alternatives. Sink claimed evangelism fails because pragmatists only consider new technologies when existing solutions cause significant pain, a condition largely unmet in the stable C# ecosystem. The concrete outcome is F#'s continued niche status despite technical merits, with mainstream adoption contingent on identifying and solving acute pain points for pragmatic teams.

This 2010 blog post rebutted common criticisms of Erlang's Prolog-like syntax, standard library consistency, and viability for large systems. The author argued semantics (like process isolation for state) matter more than syntax, and defended documentation quality. Commenters debated syntax's role, with some noting its barrier to adoption. The discussion concretely highlighted Erlang's process-oriented abstraction model as its architectural differentiator.

A 2008 critique of Erlang highlighted its Prolog-like syntax, inconsistent libraries, and perceived unsuitability for large teams. Experienced practitioners responded in comments, citing million-line Erlang codebases and frameworks like Nitrogen and Webmachine for web development. Commenters also noted the emergence of BEAM-targeted languages like Elixir and Reia to address syntax concerns. The thread captured early skepticism and community rebuttals that preceded Erlang's broader adoption in concurrent, distributed systems.

Common Lisp was used for JPL's Remote Agent autonomous control system, which successfully operated NASA's Deep Space 1 mission in 1999. According to the project engineer, Lisp enabled in-flight debugging via a REPL, crucial for resolving a race condition undetected during ground tests. Despite this, political pressure and integration challenges with C led management to mandate a shift to C++ and later Java, citing industry best practices. Lisp was subsequently phased out at JPL, though the author notes the decision stemmed partly from unreliable C-based interprocess communication, not language deficiencies.

Microsoft embedded the Small Prolog interpreter within Windows NT's network configuration subsystem (NCPA.CPL) to declaratively solve the "plumbing" problem of binding interdependent drivers and protocols. According to the paper, components were abstracted as objects with interface classes; Prolog facts and rules then determined all valid bindings and load orders via backtracking. This centralized, declarative approach reportedly simplified installation, prevented invalid configurations, and allowed vendors to add components via declarative scripts rather than procedural code. Microsoft stated the system contributed to Windows NT Advanced Server being judged as particularly reliable and simple to configure.