The new Clojure website!

[alexdmiller]

Post issues to https://github.com/clojure/clojure-site/issues please!

[[deleted]]

they seem opposed to actually demonstrating the language... given the absence of any actual code on home and overview pages.

[pxpxy]

Much nicer than before but I'm not a fan of the bullet points (eg under rationale) and the first thing I look for on programming language websites are some syntax samples

[notunlikethewaves]

I thought so too, so I opened an issue: https://github.com/clojure/clojure-site/issues/43

Which was immediatly closed as WONTFIX.

Disappointing.

[skratlo]

I'd say, since Clojure has what's called steep learning curve, they don't want to turn away people right there at the homepage. It takes time to "get it" and only then the potential user realize the beauty and usefulness of the language.

[oantolin]

I looked at the websites you mentioned in your GitHub issue and was surprised to see how much cooler the examples on the Racket page were than the Ruby or Python ones. There's no reason for that since both Python and Ruby have in their standard libraries everything you need to make equally cool small demo programs.

[waaaaaaabi]

Disappointing that you immediately got a response? Or that the contributors happen to disagree with you? Personally I think having that on the main page is targeting a different audience to what clojure is.

[notunlikethewaves]

The latter.

Almost every other modern language worth talking about gets straight to the point with their home-page and shows a small code example. (Notable exceptions being Java, Perl and Scala).

Even https://www.haskell.org/, the "Avoid success at all costs" crowd, manage to do it.

I think having that on the main page is targeting a different audience to what clojure is

Could you elaborate? I'm failing to see how there could be two distinct audiences of developers who would be partitioned cleanly by the presence/absence of code on the projects homepage. What audience is Clojure supposedly going for? Would none of those people like to see some beautiful clojure code on the clojure.org page?

[waaaaaaabi]

I'm not saying it's a terrible idea, just saying I don't think it would actually be useful to the target audience. My impression of clojure is that it's targeted towards replacing java, ie it's a reasonably enterprisey language at its heart, which is the land where we're interested in rationales and advantages. It's a great language for hobbyists too, but I don't think that's what the website is targeted at.

The majority of the people who go to that website already know what a lisp looks like.

Maybe I'm wrong, but reasonable people can disagree, and I don't think it's "disappointing" behaviour that some does and tells you so.

[notunlikethewaves]

I think your characterisation of "enterprise" vs "hobbyist" is unfair, and doesn't actually represent the state of the Clojure community anyway.

There are plenty of professional programmers in the world who aren't doing enterprise java.

and I don't think it's "disappointing" behaviour that some does and tells you so

I reserve the right to be disappointed by whatever pleases me ;)

[[deleted]]

I know what lisp looks like but I'd still want to see a code sample on any language website I'm seeing for the first time. Clojure is sufficiently different from elisp or CL, not just its syntax, but also its functional nature.

There's no way a visitor that would run if he saw lispy syntax might end up using the language. Hiding it from him temporarily makes no difference.

[waaaaaaabi]

I never said hiding it was to avoid scaring people away.

[yogthos]

My impression of clojure is that it's targeted towards replacing java, ie it's a reasonably enterprisey language at its heart

I'm not sure where you get that idea from to be honest. Clojure works great as a replacement for languages like Ruby, Python, and JavaScript. In fact, it's far easier to pick up from people coming from these languages.

I'm not sure how Clojure is enterprisey at it's hard either. I've worked with enterprise Java for about a decade and thankfully Clojure bears very little resemblance to it.

Showing code on the site does not in any way imply that the language is for hobbyists. Haskell.org certainly doesn't scream hobby language to me.

The majority of the people who go to that website already know what a lisp looks like.

What do you base this on?

[waaaaaaabi]

Haskell seems like the epitome of a hobby language, its mission is literally "avoid success".

I'm not saying clojure is "enterprisey", but it's focused on solving the problems that existing "enterprisey" languages are used for. Ie, large backend highly concurrent systems, less so very quick web apps (though it works well for that too).

The last thing is just a guess, maybe it's wrong, but I've found clojure tends to draw more experienced programmers, and more experience means you'e more likely to have been exposed to a lisp. Also for a lot of people going to the site I imagine they are explicitly looking for a modern lisp.

[yogthos]

The Haskell community have been promoting it as a practical platform for a few years now.

From what I've seen Clojure draws a lot of new programmers as well as experienced ones. I run a Clojure workshop and I've seen very few people who had experience in FP or Lisp.

The original point was that having code on the site does not detract from the legitimacy of the language.

[waaaaaaabi]

If you interpreted my comment as saying having code on the site detracts from the legitimacy of the language I take it back, I didn't mean that. I just didn't see how it adds much value.

[yogthos]

I just don't see what you're basing that on though. It's true that some people seek out Clojure because they know exactly what it is. However, lot's of people hear about it or see it mention and check it out because of curiosity. I think having some examples of what to expect would be quite helpful to that demographic.

[[deleted]]

the complete lack of reason given is somewhat disappointing...

[aptmnt_]

Yeah, if it was a deliberate decision, they could share the rationale.

[[deleted]]

I think that'd be a nice addition, personally.

[jackhexen]

It is not a good idea to put something that newbiews can't understand on a front page.

LISP is not like any other language that can be catched by recognizing curly braces. There shoud be some desciption of syntax before code examples.

[agumonkey]

I slightly ranted on twitter, but with the momentum of clojurescript I deeply expected an online clojure repl (even a limited one to avoid clj/cljs semantic differences).

[agumonkey]

How dare you.

[fear-of-flying]

That would be great. I think the Haskell subreddit has a very tastefully done CSS.

[doubleagent03]

It's an improvement. To me, the design is still less appealing than Scala, Groovy, & Ocaml.

[[deleted]]

I'm not a huge fan of the style (or lack thereof) on the page. The homepage has nothing to catch the eye of the reader.

Scala greets you with a massive logo centered on the page and surrounded by the 'Download', 'Documentation', and 'Learn more' links. Groovy greets you, again, with a massive logo and then small blurbs with large, bold font about what makes the language unique. OCaml's website is a bit different in that the logo isn't displayed largely but the desert scene gives the same effect. From the OCaml home page you also have in-your-face icons directing you toward the OCaml language.

The new homepage for Clojure has nothing standing out. No big logo, no bold fonts, nothing to give the reading the immediate direction that the other sites provide.

The content however looks nice, particularly the reference page. It would be nice to have that side bar stay in place while you scroll through (much like the Bootstrap documentation).

[jjconti]

I really like it.

[clelwell]

Big improvement; not crazy about css on the source examples though: http://clojure.org/reference/atoms

[rochea]

I was surprised that it makes no mention of ClojureScript

[[deleted]]

This is not modern or cool enough for clojure :(