alt Hacker News> By the time a beginner learning Clojure has researched and put together their web stack and got it all hooked up and is ready to start, the Django developer already shipped their project last quarter, iterated on it a few times, and is on to the next thing.
Yes, but this is intentional. Django developers are optimizing for "easy" which makes it fast to spin up project after project, Clojure developers are optimizing for "simple" which means way longer time to get the project of the ground, to nail all the design before things start to actually be put together, which makes it easier and faster to iterate on the same codebase after years of working on.
Ask the Django developer how easy it is for them to add features after a project they've done that approach with for N years, then compare it to a Clojure codebase, and you'll notice the difference.
Sure, I guess this is "downplaying" and "denying", personally I see people who disagree with me as people who disagree with me, that's fine, I thought that was why we were sharing our opinions in this forum in the first place. But anyways, if you're very deep into "frameworks are clearly superior in every case", that we disagree probably matters less. Best wishes regardless!
Rich's Simple Made Easy talk is really interesting and insightful and I still love it but I think now the distinction is brought out too often almost reflexively, and used as a crutch. Yes "simple" and "easy" are not the same thing, but nor are they opposites. Just because something is "not easy" doesn't mean it's "simple".
I think there are lots of well maintained Django projects. In fact, if I do a search on AI and on google for what one web stack probably has the lowest overall total cost of ownership including maintenance years down the line, Django usually is what comes up, without even specifically searching for/mentioning it.
> if you're very deep into "frameworks are clearly superior in every case"
This is a mischaracterization of what I have said, and is more like the extreme position that Clojure devs seem to take. The original commenter said that Clojure is wonderful, but it's too bad that [for the people who want it,] there isn't the option of a well maintained, all-in-one, batteries included framework. You deny that this is a problem, saying that actually a well-chosen set of libraries are superior (I guess in every case, because if not then it actually would be a problem sometimes).