Clojure advantages

[Sayth renshaw]

Hi Amit

I wonder if you could outline what you see for clojure compared to other JVM based languages such as Groovy(Groovy++, Griffon) and Scala? Do you see any long term advantages of clojure as the clojure development continues?

Recently I toyed with clojure using clojure box, but have started to learn Groovy. Groovy whilst not going to win any prizes for orginialtity(picked the eyes out of Python, Ruby & Smalltalk) is easy to learn and use and offers dynamic, static & mixed typing.

Re Posted from closed: Welcome Amit thread.

[Sayth renshaw]

There aren't any advantages to learning clojure to scala or clojure to groovy? There is/isn't a domain present or future that you believe clojure would excell at over the others?

[Sean Corfield]

Sayth renshaw wrote:There aren't any advantages to learning clojure to scala or clojure to groovy? There is/isn't a domain present or future that you believe clojure would excell at over the others?

Why do you ask that?

[Sayth renshaw]

Sean Corfield wrote:

Sayth renshaw wrote:There aren't any advantages to learning clojure to scala or clojure to groovy? There is/isn't a domain present or future that you believe clojure would excell at over the others?

Why do you ask that?

Why?

Because I want to understand the benefits of the language. I am going to use the language I learn long term, with family and work there isn't the time available to learn multiple languages, I know some java and would like to expand on that.

[Sean Corfield]

I meant more because you'd already asked the same question yesterday when you started this thread, so I just wondered if you were asking again because no one had answered yet.

I think the question of benefits of Clojure over Groovy / Scala have been answered in a number of threads now. I know I've answered the Clojure vs Groovy question twice already today (in Benefits of Learning Clojure and in New to Clojure). Could you read over those threads and see if they answer your question?

If you have follow up questions, I'll be happy to answer them (in this thread or another).

I understand what you mean about family and work time pressures. It's why I recommend Bruce Tate's "Seven Languages in Seven Weeks" because over the space of seven weeks, by finding just a few hours each week, you can go thru the exercises and learn the basics - and the concepts - of seven new languages. I worked thru the examples on my laptop while I was sat watching TV with my wife, getting thru a "day" worth of examples each evening (there are three "days" of examples for each of the seven languages).

BTW, Groovy actually has no static typing***. The following is valid Groovy:

String foo = 42;

It compiles, but it won't run. Java will refuse to compile this. The following won't compile in Java but will compile and run in Groovy:

if ( false ) {
    String foo = 42;
}

It surprised me too when I first saw it - I had to try it out for myself!

***Actually Groovy has some static typing - but not in the obvious sense: http://james-iry.blogspot.com/2009/07/groovy-does-not-have-optional-static.html

[Sayth renshaw]

Thanks for the reply I will follow up those threads. just on a side note really, groovy via groovy++ has the ability to have dynamic, mixed and static typing. here is an overview at Dr Dobbs. http://drdobbs.com/open-source/229500788

[Sean Corfield]

Yup. Groovy++ is mentioned at the end of the James Iry blog post I linked to.