Kemin Labs

I'm also not impressed with the Clojure/ClojureScript code-sharing story, which requires hacks[2] to use the same code on the client and server.

I think this is definitely a "the glass is half-empty" interpretation. I mean, let's point out that you're complaining about an environment where you can share code between a codebase running on the server and one on the client--and it isn't JavaScript. And it's not ideal? Of course it's not ideal. But you can do inter-op with Java (server-side) and JavaScript (client-), using the same syntax, and with cljx, you can do this in the same file. This is freaking awesome, even with the messy bits that come along with it, in my opinion.

A smaller community, fewer libraries and less mature tools makes it kind of a bummer from a social perspective.

As far as this point, there's less I can disagree with: the community, while small, is awesome, but there is a way to go before ClojureScript, at least, is going to have the ease of "install and get going" that you have with other platforms. Everything from testing to getting a reasonable console up and running is in a state of flux and cannot be favorably compared to JavaScript, other than the argument that ClojureScript provides a better enough programming experience to outweigh the ease-of-setup that JS provides. For me that's more than enough, but for others I can understand that it's not, yet.

But it absolutely is improving, very quickly. We really need more people to be using…

Thanks; great response. I had forgotten about crossovers.

I did a little project in CLJS and found the additional power of the language nice, but not revolutionary. I've found getting into Node.js that despite the well-known warts of JavaScript, the community has done an amazing job working around those problems, building powerful abstractions, and shipping simple, un-complected code. I hardly feel like I'm compromising on expressivity.

So for me, language like "callback hell" and "wasteful" rings a bit hollow, as it doesn't reflect my experience writing JavaScript. In fact, if I were a contributor to When.js I could imagine it being pretty insulting.

Maybe we can win more people to ClojureScript by recognizing, not diminishing, the great stuff folks have made with vanilla JS, and showing how CLJS provides interop while making JavaScript programming even better. Kevin Lynagh's post here[1] is a nice example of that.

[1] http://keminglabs.com/blog/angular-cljs-weather-app/

As for my "glass is half-empty" interpretation of code-sharing, I'm thinking of how you can trivially require jQuery from a Node.js application and use it for scraping[2]. Or how you can require('http') in the browser and effortlessly make HTTP requests in browser or server with the same code[3]. I'd love to be proven wrong, but ClojureScript seems far away from this kind of stuff. You can't use Compojure or HTTP-Kit in ClojureScript. So you could say that while Clojure has a decent client/server…

We use ClojureScript (and Clojure) at http://economi.co and I'm really enjoying it.

Maybe one of the most difficult things coming into it is trying to relate it to something like BackBone.

However generally speaking in Clojure the culture is more about libraries than frameworks.

C2 http://keminglabs.com/c2/ which on the outset looks just like a ClojureScript version of d3 is actually a great library to use instead of a traditional front end framework.

Check the example implementation of the class TodoMVC list here: https://github.com/lynaghk/todoFRP/tree/master/todo/c2

It's uses normal Clojure data structures within atoms as the data model (https://github.com/lynaghk/todoFRP/blob/master/todo/c2/src/cljs/todo/core.cljs#L9) and uses C2 to automatically update the UI (https://github.com/lynaghk/todoFRP/blob/master/todo/c2/src/cljs/todo/list.cljs). Very elegant.

I'm just starting to explore this area myself, but have already found it useful for a few smaller parts of our site.

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Portland, Oregon or remote

Data analysis & visualization: on the web using HTML, SVG, and JavaScript, but I also like the constraints of print / PDF (via LaTeX + Illustrator). I typically use a combination of Ruby + R + SQL. My machine learning experience is in classification problems---typically some dimensionality reduction like SVD or sparse dictionary learning followed by a support vector machine. I'm waiting desperately for social media network graphs to blow over.

Kindle application development: I'm one of the handful of developers in Amazon's private SDK beta making "active content" for everyone's favorite ultra low power black and white mobile device. See http://keminglabs.com

Portfolio: http://www.dirigibleFlightcraft.com
Github: https://github.com/lynaghk/

This problem is the bane of my existence as a css/html guy. However I don't believe the core problem is what you suggest. Forcing designers to just work within wireframes isn't going to work. Assets and wireframes is only a small part of what a designer does when creating a good user experience.

I think the solution is going to lie somewhere inbetween, with designers needing to expand their knowledge and working within tools that are based on how CSS and HTML actually function instead of a program that allows you to just place boxes wherever you want and hope its easy to code.

I've been following what these guys are doing over at BoxBox, they are onto something big I think. https://keminglabs.com/boxbox/

Interfacing with other JS libraries isn't really a problem - that has been relatively pleasant for a long time now (:foreign-libs compiler option allows you integrate arbitrary JS libraries).

Also note that the most popular JS libraries like Underscore.js and jQuery add little value to ClojureScript given the rich standard library and pure ClojureScript solutions like Domina.

Integrating with functional frameworks like Angular.js isn't too painful as evidenced by Weathertron - http://keminglabs.com/blog/angular-cljs-weather-app/