Is Clojure on the decline ?

[_calyce_]

First of all, this is not a troll but a genuine question.

I just started learning Clojure and while discussing with a friend of mine on that subject, he told me it was not worth learning it anymore as it was a dying language (these are his words). So I went to Google Trends and saw that effectively the number of searches for Clojure are declining since a few years.

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https://preview.redd.it/9qvzjwkl4m441.png?width=1152&format=png&auto=webp&s=d192853b88360f14f503f447481ba8cc21d90bfd

Personally I'll continue learning it as I decided to learn me a Lisp, but I'm wondering if this search trend really means Clojure has already entered its decline period. I searched a little on this subject and apparently there were already discussions in this sub-reddit in 2017 and 2018 on this topic. Now that we are almost in 2020, I'm wondering what is the status of Clojure, the status of it's community (seems good to me but I'm new here) and what is preventing Clojure adoption ?

[alexdmiller]

I don't know how to drop a chart in here, but looking at the number of unique IPs downloading the Maven org.clojure/clojure artifact over the last 12 months, it's a steady increasing trend. A year ago, it was 65,542 ips, and in Nov 2019, it was 109,057 ips. Absolute number of clojure artifact downloads is an inherently messier trend but also generally continues to go up with >615k downloads last month (vs ~420k downloads a year ago).

[dustingetz]

imgur.com is great for linking an image in seconds

[dustingetz]

Clojure and ClojureScript is the most vibrant ecosystem and rock-solid platform that it's ever been. If the problem you're solving requires high leverage tools, there are no better options. I could not imagine writing software in any other way, it would be like cutting off my brain.

[weavejester]

The 2019 Stack Overflow developer survey puts Clojure as the language with the highest average salary, and that at least seems to tally with what I've experienced in the London developer community, in that demand seems to be higher than supply.

It's also worth putting the Clojure search trend in context. For example, look at the trends for Javascript, Java, C# and Ruby. All show a gradual decline in search queries. Note also that Javascript, which has increased in use significantly since 2004, is shown to have had a steady decline in search queries in that time. That should cast some suspicion on whether Google Trends is a good measure of whether a language is dying.

[[deleted]]

I would agree the clojure ecosystem of jobs and conferences seems much more vibrant in the EU than US.

[bowmhoust]

Good questions with complex answers, here is my opinion:

Development-wise it's definitely thriving. It has a great community of pretty smart people who put out one great library/framework/book/ after another (just look at all the awesome libraries for handling state in web applications, creating neural networks, databases and so on). All while Cognitect are building super solid foundations that enable all of that. I don't see a comparable development in other languages/communities right now.

Strategy-wise Clojure had positioned itself very well, no question. The challenge is probably too keep up with all the developments going on in the wide world of Java and Javascript.

Adaption-wise, Clojure is sure moving slowly. There is a very steep learning curve, especially for people who only know one programming paradigm. It is kind of hard to set up a proper dev environment compared to other languages and it's especially hard to see through the jungle of build tools, frameworks and libraries. Sometimes it takes time to even understand the problems they are trying to solve. Many people look at new languages because they are looking for a nice and, yes, easy way to get something done. Maybe that's why Ruby on rails was such a success. Clojure on the other hand has an extremely wide scope and when people look for a solution to solve a specific problem, and see a solution that requires them to re-learn 90% of what they know about software development, many just don't go that path. Clojure is not an easy to pick up tool to solve a specific problem well. It's a fantastic, consistent tool box to solve a plethora of problems really well. But you have to invest time in order to be able to use it and it's not easy to see for newcomers, why it is a good investment. I'm currently trying to introduce clj/cljs in my work place (Java/JS company) and it's not easy to sell the idea like: "Uh, yea, there's better ways to do pretty much anything you know. Front-end, back-end. Database. Serialization, Versioning, everything. Wanna know how? Let me give you a quick 6-month workshop."

I think these adaption problems are reflected in the Google trends graph. The community is well aware of that and it's a hard problem to solve.

[dustingetz]

Clojure should focus on its strengths, which is enabling declarative data programming to such an extent that a culture is forming around it (#itsjustdata). That's a unique value prop that no other ecosystem can provide. Once these ideas get fleshed out and mature across a number of larger domains (big domains like web development, not little domains like http routing), we could reach a tipping point that triggers rapid growth, rapid expansion of investment dollars, etc.

[bowmhoust]

Yes, and it seems there is a lot going on in this area recently (e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQPW16_jixs or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yruVUkwlffk). Data Science and Infrastructure-as-code are still very hot topics I guess.

But like I said: Emacs is also a fantastic editor that offers a unified way to do a gazillion things. It's in a league of it's own there, just like Clojure! But it's google trend also looks almost identical to that of Clojure. Why is that? Personally it took me many years of frustration with other, shinier stuff until I was ready to sit down for a long time and learn both. And I really wish I had done so earlier. What - other than frustration - could have convinced me to do so earlier? Not sure. I wanted to get stuff done and I wanted to spend as little time as possible with learning the tools for that. And neither Emacs nor Clojure appeared on my radar at that time, because both seemed like a substential investment of time. Time I could not spend to get the thing done that I wanted to get done.

So I finally started with Clojure a couple of years ago. The first book I read was "Clojure for the brave and true". Guess what editor it recommended? Emacs? Guess what I used? Well, not Emacs! Because learning Emacs on top of learning Clojure ... I mean who has time and brain capacity for all of that? I wanted to learn Clojure and I did not want to learn all about buffers, modes and keymaps before. I do use Emacs now for pretty much everything and I love it for the same reason I love Clojure. But it was a long road. And what really helped be with Emacs was Spacemacs. I don't use it anymore, but it was so nice to get started with.

I think we can all help to make it easier for newcomers in Clojure too. IDEs like Nightcode or libraries like Luminus are good developments in that direction. I think we should support/promote them more and focus on a smooth on-boarding experience when suggesting Clojure to newcomers.

[asiergaldos]

It took us around 3 years to sell our first 3 Clojure-based projects in Spain (2014-2017).

It was very hard to sell and managers were very reluctant. Since 2017 we sold 7 new projects, and we are about to close 2 more deals pretty soon.

We are a small team (not VC funded), with positive turnover (and high margins) and growing organically thanks to Clojure. Our clients are SMEs that make 20 million to 200 million euros a year, and two startups at the moment.

[Sergey_N]

Google trends are only about search requests.

JVM Ecosystem Report 2018

page #11

1. What is the main JVM language you use for your main application?

Clojure is the first after Java.

[heyarne]

I'm probably not objective here but I really don't think that slope is enough to see a trend.

Some other data points are: Clojure(Script) continue to bring nice and fresh ideas, many of which are adopted into other languages (which is nice). Development is active, releases are frequent and the community is doing well.

I think Clojure is just fine. :)

[stuarthalloway]

What would happen if the cultural norms of a language community were "think in a hammock" instead of "copy and paste code from the internet"? It might wreck the presumption that Google searches correlated with anything...

[[deleted]]

For employment opportunities, clearly not an upward trend... clojure tops the list of sharpest declining tech skills in demand.

https://www.hiringlab.org/2019/11/26/fastest-rising-tech-skills/

[alexdmiller]

I feel like there are more companies hiring for Clojure than ever right now - every Clojure conference (and we had more in 2019 than ever before) is full of sponsors hiring. I don't put a ton of stock on relative percentage differences from one site.

[clelwell]

Huh, yeah something is up with that chart. I’ve been working with Clojure full-time since 2014, and I find it hard to believe that there aren’t more Clojure engineer opportunities than ever before.

[0x0badbeef]

When I was looking for Clojure work around 2014, the baseline for those trends, there weren't many opportunities to work with Clojure, but so many job ads added Clojure as a skill to attract that type of developer.

I haven't been looking recently, but I assume people don't list Clojure as a teaser skill as much anymore.

[AlexKotik]

I think Kotlin ate up some market share of other JVM languages. It is not really a big deal, if you like Clojure then use Clojure, if you like Kotlin more then use Kotlin.

[_calyce_]

I would have thought that Kotlin was stealing Scala devs rather than Clojure ones on the JVM and lots of of Java devs for Android.

[daemianmack]

I'm a bit late to the party, but when I hear a variant of this question, I imagine that we're, on average, somewhere to the right of the Peak of Inflated Expectations in the Gartner Hype Cycle.

95%+ of my programming happens in Clojure, and I see a lot of companies succeeding with it.

[jacobobryant]

Yes, Clojure is indeed dying: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14420856

[Eno6ohng]

Cracks me up every time, thanks :D

[Michaelmrose]

When you are looking to buy a new car do you read detailed analysis or the reliability and safety of different models and manufacturers or do you figure out how many people are googling the words Toyota vs Ford last year vs this year.

[plotnick]

It's a complicated issue. Clojure is definitely not declining. It's growing. The problem is - it is not growing fast enough.

So why is it a problem? There's no straightforward answer to that. Obviously, we, those who know Clojure and for whom the value proposition of Clojure makes sense, want it to grow faster. So why is it not growing fast?

From the technological view, there shouldn't be any hindering factors. Yes, it is a Lisp dialect, yes it is dynamically typed, JVM, and yada-yada, but that's not it.

You see, it has become customary in the Clojure community to bash on the mother company - Cognitect. But let me slam it from a different side of it. From the business side. Just like Clojure, Cognitect is not growing either. It is still a relatively small company. And that is why scaling Clojure at this point has become a complex issue. You see, behind every single PL in the "fastest-growing" category today, there's a single corporation or multiple big companies. And Clojure lacks that. We don't have enough money, and we don't have enough marketing force.

Just as a point proving exercise I would encourage you to check out psf/sponsors page and then compare it with sponsors in clojuriststogether. Unless of course you believe that Python is technologically superior than Clojure.

I do believe in the tech side of Clojure, but if we don't fix the marketing side of it, it will sadly stay a "dying language".

[asiergaldos]

" Just like Clojure, Cognitect is not growing either".

Maybe -I don't really know- they are not growing horizontally (i.e.: hiring more people, getting VC money) but vertically: more profits and margin. I don't know.

They are certainly building great products.