Comment by systems
3 days ago
The problem with F#, Clojure and Elixir (hosted languages)
For F# , you need some basic C# knowledge For Clojure, you need some basic Java knowledge For Elixir, you need some basic Erlang knowledge
I like all 3 languages but usually each vm have a primary language, and each hosted language eventually become hosted on that primary language not the vm
I understand that for many task simple, to medium complexity, you might not need that, but it seem as you try to be more advanced you hit the wall of having to learn you host vm primary language
> For Elixir, you need some basic Erlang knowledge
As an Elixir programmer, this does not resonate. Basically the only thing I've ever felt I needed to understand Erlang for was ets, but let's be honest, that's not really proper Erlang but just the terrible ets query syntax. And all this requires is "ability to read enough erlang term syntax to be able to understand the ets manual". I don't think I could write a single line of correct Erlang by heart.
I feel like that's different in F#, where you still need to know lots of .NET internals which are all documented in C#y terms with C# examples etc. Elixir wraps pretty much all good Erlang/OTP internals in nice Elixiry modules, which solves that quite nicely.
Elixir has its warts but this really isn't one of them.
Thanks. I know a bit of Erlang (put some effort into learning, but never used it in real life, probably forgotten what I learned) and want to learn Elixir which seems better suited to what I want to do in the short to medium term.
Erlang is not a difficult language. Unusual, but actually quite sane syntax. If you are already familiar with Elixir it would probably be pretty easy to learn the basics of Erlang.
I've written a lot of Clojure now, and I've managed to avoided learning any Java really.
That’s a reassuring thing to hear as a new clojure learner who has little interest in java.
What bits of java have you ended up needing? Like do you often use java libraries that don’t have clojure wrappers?
I feel like I’m often running up against little things. I’ll google “how to do xyz in clojure” and the top SO answer is to use a java library that apparently everybody already knows about, cause so many clojurists came from java first!
> What bits of java have you ended up needing?
The same with Clojurescript and JS (and probably with Clojure-Dart) - you have nice interop with the hosting platform. The need for learning anything about Java (while writing Clojure) basically boils down to finding API documentation for a specific class and simply using it. That's all. That's all you'd ever need.
> For F# , you need some basic C# knowledge For Clojure, you need some basic Java knowledge For Elixir, you need some basic Erlang
Honestly, none of this really rings a bell. Having used all three options, I never felt that. Well, I already knew C# before getting into F#, but honestly, it felt like my C# knowledge at the time was more of a distraction. Been using Clojure for nine years, never done any serious Java and have not felt any need for it. Not knowing Erlang wasn't a problem with Elixir, like at all.
I worked with Elixir for over five years without knowing anything about Erlang. I know Erlang now, but only because I was interested in learning it, not because I needed to do so to write Elixir code.