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Don't know how are things on the Common Lisp side, but on the Clojure side, as much as I prefer it to Javascript I end writing regular web applications in Javascript, because for me, it is the more pragmatic choice when I need to get something done. Javascript/nodejs has lots of good mature libraries with good documentation for anything related to web dev, sponsored by companies that eat their own dog food (ex: the passportjs lib).


My impression is that CL has much less libraries, but they're generally much better in quality. Having a really powerful language at your disposal also alleviates some of the pains of not having enough "batteries included". But when doing web, it's hard to avoid JS anyway (ParenScript in CL is cool and all, but you still need to make sure the JS it compiles to actually works).


A more powerful language won't help much in getting things done if there is lack of libs in a domain you are not an expert on.

For example: implementing authentication and authorization.

So I agree with everything you said but I'm mostly talking about getting shit done.


ClojureScript can be used on both Node.js and frontend and is able to call any JS library without any effort. I don't understand what you're talking about at all. It's like saying that Clojure has very few libraries, conveniently forgetting about all of the Java ecosystem which Clojure integrates with seamlessly...


yeah and half of your code and of your time will be writing interop code in non-idiomatic clojure, unless of course you devote even more time and write a clojure wrapper to use the js or java lib in an idiomatic manner.


> yeah and half of your code and of your time will be writing interop code in non-idiomatic clojure

I fail to see any problem with this. Writing non-idiomatic code does not mean that it's going to take more time. There's certainly a value in writing idiomatic code in a given language, but "practicality beats purity", at least in my mind.


Wrapping Java and JavaScript libraries is not idiomatic Clojure(Script), this is the whole point of having good interop.




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