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#biff
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2021-07-07
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ej15:07:41

Would biff be a good choice if I am just starting out with web development in Clojure?

Jacob O'Bryant16:07:55

Maybe. I'd say if you have a specific app that you want to ship quickly, yes. Whereas if your main goal is just to learn clojure web dev in general, you might be better off learning individual libraries one-at-a-time (e.g. start with compojure and do a 'hello world' web page, then add a database, etc). In the latter case you could use Luminus or Biff to figure out which libraries to learn. My recommendation would be to give Biff a try, but be ready to switch away if it starts to feel like you're in over your head, since there is quite a lot of stuff in there. And then you might decide to give it another try after you've got more of the fundamentals down. I would like to be able to recommend Biff for newcomers wholeheartedly, but it needs more people to try it out, give feedback on areas they tripped up on, and (especially) write tutorials etc.

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Steven Deobald05:07:49

@U01FJKR2SEA Full disclosure: I've never used biff in earnest to build an app. I've only puttered through its internals. But from what I've seen of it, it often makes sensible default choices of the sort where I think to myself "I might have done that." I might add a second case to Jacob's category of "ship an app quickly" which would be "see how much you can build, and how quickly." You could still pull back from it, of course, but it could prove to be a fun experiment.

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