r/Clojure

I have been thinking about Clojure, to be more specific, Lisp. I recently watched the Clojure documentary on Cultrepo. I guess all you need is a pretty woman on your side to build a lang lol.
I have just turned 21, and I do not see anyone is campus using lisp dialects out here everyone is either on TS, C#, Python, or some PHP. Never lisp. Is it going to die?

I read some of Paul Graham's essays, and He loves Lisp and wonders whether there is something I am not seeing. I also read on HN a blog about you will never understand what people love lisp until you try it.(https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46070298if there is)

Clojure is weird. I looked at the syntanx and my word the (,],{ somewhat turned me off. I later read y'all do not have types. Is immutability strong enough not to, need types?

Everyone is also doing clojure in Emacs. I do not have the patience for Emacs, Vim is superior lol.

What somewhat paused me was nubank. I was surprisedNubank a bank using a Lispwas , untyped system. I mean I thought all of them were just a bunch of java, c# fanboys. Now I want to double check is there something I am missing.

So my question is. Should I pickup this lang. I am more of a TS dude but maybe some lisp will help me understand TS more. What is your clojure story?

I am not asking you to pitch it to me but I want to just understand you all.

I am also trying out scheme mostly because I am watching the MIT SICIP on youtube.

• CLJ-2945 - reify - incorrectly transfers reader metadata to runtime object
• CLJ-2228 - constantly - unroll to remove rest args allocation

I mostly using Claude Code for design and implementation. I have an opportunity to switch to a different AI tool. Rumored that Codex is the best right now for general coding. Anyone compare the models specifically for Clojure?

For my dev, I generally have Claude create a plan, then have it run 2+ agents to refine the use of functional programming paradigms/patterns and data-driven code.

When I discovered AI coding in 2024, I was immediately thinking: how do I run something like this on my own computer?

Obviously, it wasn't possible then, and remains impossible now... Or does it?

Gemma4's release is what finally got the ball rolling for me. There was a cheap model that could run on not-state-of-the-art hardware, and do reasoning, and even a bit of coding (with some help). So I tried about 10 different prototypes trying to get Gemma4 running locally to produce code, or at least snippets of code. Mainly targetting Python, since there's a billion lines of the stuff Gemma4 and other models slurped up and "knows".

But, I couldn't get Gemma4 to output anything useful in strict Python. Even with a RAG, language graph, linter, etc. It was just too difficult and slow and hallucinated even simplistic scripts. So, I put it on the backburner, kept watching Primeagen, and kept hearing about Uncle Bob and his LISPs.

I had no clue what a LISP was, but upon reading about it, I thought that this possibly the key to the entire problem. Namely the REPL, code as data, writing the AST directly. So I set out again on the harness, but with a new approach.

Since LLMs don't really like symbols, (as in the typically cost several tokens, and can induce hallucination) I thought Gemma4 would need some kind of intermediate language that serves as a go-between. So thus: the unnamed DSL that transpiles into Clojure was born. I chose Clojure because it made making the DSL significantly easier and less time consuming and less annoying to debug, its a LISP, something about it just feels right, and it compiles to the JVM. So tons of functionality.

So the harness > plans out an architecture > structures it in json > the coding task gets handed over to the coding Gemma4 > The coding Gemma4 then writes the unnamed DSL directly into the REPL, which handles the whitespace (which represents the infamous paranthesis heavy LISP code), provides context, internal error messages, validation, etc. > the compiler writes all of this to a json > if the DSL "code" fails for any reason, it is able to reason with the REPLs error messages on it's own and repair itself.

Of course, this kind of ignores the fact that the language itself has to be built up so it has enough features to make it feel general. It's not there yet. But I just had a few complex (for a Gemma model) specs, that it was able to solve both with and without self repair, and it's really exciting!

After a ten-year hiatus, we are bringing the EuroClojure conference to Prague from May 19 to 21, 2027.

The main theme for this upcoming edition will be the design, long-term development, and operation of reliable systems. This makes the event highly relevant for industry veterans, ranging from senior developers, tech leads, VPs of Engineering to CTOs.

The goal is to showcase engineering approaches within the Clojure ecosystem, but with a strong emphasis on broader applicability. Together, we will explore the real-world portability of these concepts to other tech stacks, mutual inspiration across different communities, and, of course, adapting to AI-assisted development.

You can already sign up for the mailing list at https://2027.euroclojure.org to stay updated. We are also actively seeking input from the community. Please use the form on the conference website to submit your ideas and content suggestions.

I've gotten to quite like using lisp and would like to know as many places as possible I can make use of it. I already use it for writing scripts in Gimp. I use Maxima CAS (I'm an Open University student doing Bsc Mathematics) but have not seen how I can use pure lisp with it. I've also started learning to use emacs and have heard lisp is used to write scripts/macros.

Any tips and pointers for further practice would be appreciated :)

Is ClojureVerse / Zulip etc. not providing a read-only archive of Clojurians Slack any longer? I just took a look and couldn't find it in Zulip at all, and the last synced post I could find in ClojureVerse was from 2024.

Or am I just having a bad hair eyes day?

Note: please don't suggest "just sign up for Clojurians Slack" - that doesn't work for my use case.