[HN Gopher] Morse, an open-source interactive tool for inspectin...
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       Morse, an open-source interactive tool for inspecting Clojure
        
       Author : xmlblog
       Score  : 140 points
       Date   : 2023-04-28 12:31 UTC (10 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (clojure.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (clojure.org)
        
       | giancarlostoro wrote:
       | This sounds awful to google for, I guess if you do "Clojure
       | Morse" it might work. The other nitpick is, if you're ever
       | introducing a new language, regardless of context, throw some
       | code samples, like a simple applicable "hello world" at a
       | minimum.
       | 
       | And because someone has to...
       | 
       | "Can I look at your Morse code?"
        
         | rippeltippel wrote:
         | > if you're ever introducing a new language, regardless of
         | context, throw some code samples
         | 
         | This is not a new language, it's a tool for Clojure.
         | 
         | I really appreciate the contributions that Nubank is making
         | (after making Datomic free,
         | https://blog.datomic.com/2023/04/datomic-is-free.html). My only
         | nitpick this time is that I would have liked some
         | screenshots/screencasts of the this new tool in action.
        
           | mst wrote:
           | dimitar found and linked a screenshot upthread: https://raw.g
           | ithubusercontent.com/nubank/morse/main/screensh...
           | 
           | (more would be nice but it's a start)
        
             | giancarlostoro wrote:
             | I apparently missread the content, more reason why it needs
             | screenshots or anything informative front and center...
        
               | [deleted]
        
               | johngalt_ wrote:
               | You could have just read the article, it explains very
               | clearly what it is about. Or checked the github page
               | linked in the article that provides more information and
               | screenshots.
        
         | marcofiset wrote:
         | As long as the tool lives in the ecosystem and is discoverable
         | alongside Clojure, the name isn't an issue at all.
        
         | medo-bear wrote:
         | clojure hardly needs a "hello world" introduction
        
       | dimitar wrote:
       | Screenshot here:
       | https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nubank/morse/main/screensh...
        
         | sandij wrote:
         | And video here: https://docs.datomic.com/cloud/other-
         | tools/REBL.html
        
         | 0x445442 wrote:
         | All roads lead to Smalltalk.
        
           | fogus wrote:
           | there are so many lessons that we need to understand and
           | leverage in our modern tooling, languages, and systems that
           | Smalltalk and Lisp got right decades ago.
        
           | pjmlp wrote:
           | Or Lisp Machines,
           | 
           | https://twitter.com/jackrusher/status/1350839387500773378
        
       | erichocean wrote:
       | I've been really enjoying using Clojure with Clerk:
       | https://github.com/nextjournal/clerk
       | 
       | It's a bit like a Jupyter notebook, but you get to use your own
       | editor, you still have a normal Clojure REPL, it's stored in git
       | like "normal" code, etc.
       | 
       | For exploratory, information processing type work, it's pretty
       | great.
       | 
       | Demo here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bs3QX92kYA
        
       | clusterhacks wrote:
       | Are Clojure dev teams outside of Nubank currently using REBL
       | excited about this?
       | 
       | As a small project Clojure dev (and admittedly a couple years out
       | of daily Clojure use), these types of projects are hard for me to
       | place in a day-to-day work context. The doc says that Morse is
       | one tool that can "amplify the power of the programmer during
       | interactive development".
       | 
       | I totally feel like Clojure REPL-based dev is better for me
       | personally - the interactive feedback feels so natural and
       | functional programming matches so well my preferred dev process.
       | But it is more difficult for me to understand where this type of
       | tooling fits in dev workflow. Is Morse an incremental
       | improvement? Does it make more sense in significant Clojure dev
       | shops with many programmers vs just me sitting around with an
       | Emacs repl going?
        
         | hcarvalhoalves wrote:
         | Back in the day, I used the Cursive plugin + IntelliJ
         | integrated debugger to inspect complicated data structures.
         | This seems like a natural evolution.
        
         | fogus wrote:
         | > Clojure REPL-based dev is better for me personally
         | 
         | me too! Morse is complementary to your normal REPL-based
         | workflow. it is designed to not get in the way of that.
        
           | slifin wrote:
           | Is it fair to say a user of rebl isn't going to notice much
           | difference between morse and rebl?
           | 
           | But replicant seems important overall for the ecosystem and
           | probably worth highlighting?
        
         | bmillare wrote:
         | for me, (just started using it), at least 1 good case is
         | traversing deeply nested maps without going crazy. Even when
         | looking at nested structures from other langs, easy enough to
         | write a converter and then use this to inspect. Also if the
         | datatypes are special, you can have it expand in other ways
         | like links to browser, or other custom view types. That alone
         | seems pretty useful. You can make GUI like behavior with just
         | adding some metadata.
        
         | phyrex wrote:
         | If it's anything like REBL (and it looks like it) it's
         | complimentary to a repl. Think it it as a visual data browser,
         | which is something that a repl isn't good for
        
       | blatant303 wrote:
       | I wasted several hours trying to make REBL work from a Leiningen
       | project. Couldn't manage to have it connect to my REPL and show
       | me the forms I'd get there. Gave up even though I managed to
       | overcome the boggus dependencies.
       | 
       | I'm fed up with Clojure/script and the core dev team. The
       | language came out without a build system, so Technomancy invented
       | Leiningen, the build system, and eventually, something like 10
       | years later, the dev team released Deps: you still need to
       | remember painfully long commands to run your project (and as a
       | consequence store them in some textfile because eventually your
       | teammates will ask you: can you send me the command to run the
       | project/tests/whatever ?). Clojurescript is just a hideous mess
       | and having to sprinkle countless reader conditionnals because of
       | the atrocious clojurescript specific ':require-macros' is a huge
       | letdown and makes writing universal portable code that can run
       | both in the jvm and the browser a painful and sad experience. And
       | it's almost impossible to suggest improvements to the language
       | (even tiny ones) because the dev team is just smug. They'll turn
       | down your idea and implement it anyway when they feel _they_ need
       | it (I 've had 2 suggestions turned down then integrated anyway -
       | I'm the one who pointed out Ruby manages terminal map arguments
       | just fine, whether it's a literal or "variadic" map).
       | 
       | I'm looking forward to luxlang now.
       | https://trello.com/b/VRQhvXjs/lux
        
         | lgrapenthin wrote:
         | This rant has hardly anything to do with the linked
         | announcement, except that it starts with (paraphrasing) 'I once
         | tried using REBL in an unsupported way and gave up after some
         | hours' The criticisms have been adressed or discussed in many
         | other contexts already, which is also why I won't engage in
         | such discussions here.
        
           | blatant303 wrote:
           | > in an unsupported way
           | 
           | The majority of Clojure projects use Leiningen. As a
           | consequence, REBL/Morse do not support the majority of
           | Clojure projects.
        
             | lgrapenthin wrote:
             | I haven't seen leiningen based projects in a long time. Are
             | you sure?
        
               | eigenhombre wrote:
               | We specifically preferred Leiningen for all new projects
               | at my last job because of a number of plugins we still
               | used that were unsupported by Deps. This was a year ago,
               | so that may have changed since I left.
               | 
               | I still find Lein a little easier to use, and use it for
               | personal projects, but appreciate Deps's more data-
               | driven, "simpler" approach -- and it seems faster.
        
               | blatant303 wrote:
               | Go look for recent Clojure projects on github It's
               | roughly half leiningen (counted 5) half deps (counted 5)
               | with the occasional outliers using "npx shadow-cljs" or
               | other unknown build methods (counted 2).
               | 
               | https://github.com/search?q=language%3Aclojure&type=repos
               | ito...
               | 
               | Note: I examined one project per author.
        
       | geokon wrote:
       | I'm glad the MATLAB interface isn't dead haha
       | 
       | This this looks awfully similar to Reveal - though Reveal seems
       | to be more composable and modular
       | 
       | https://github.com/vlaaad/reveal/
        
       | beeskneecaps wrote:
       | -... .- -.. -. .- --- .
        
       | chankstein38 wrote:
       | No. Morse is a long-established communication protocol for
       | letters. This tool is just something named poorly.
        
         | mst wrote:
         | It's a reference to the Inspector Morse novels.
        
         | simongray wrote:
         | That is called Morse code, not Morse.
        
         | megapatch wrote:
         | Remorse maybe?
        
         | wmorse wrote:
         | Hear! Hear!
        
       | Hammershaft wrote:
       | Nice work, I had a similiar idea a month ago, if I commited to
       | the project I would have named it Explojure.
       | 
       | I'll give this a whirl tonight!
        
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       (page generated 2023-04-28 23:00 UTC)