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#clojure-uk
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2016-06-17
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thomas14:06:38

Clojure O'Clock

mccraigmccraig15:06:49

it's always clojure o'clock ;)

thomas15:06:54

for some of us it isn’t I am ‘fraid :((((

seancorfield16:06:06

How many companies do you think are using Clojure in production in the UK? Seems like there’s a really strong UK Clojure community so I’d expect there to be "lots" of companies…?

benedek16:06:32

probably @jonpither has a good impression of this

agile_geek17:06:34

@seancorfield: there are a few not lots. A handful of large companies with small pockets of Clojure and a few start ups but, apart from a pocket of Clojurians in Bristol, Glasgow and Manchester (that are all around one org in each city) not much outside London. For instance, there's no companies I'm aware of actively using Clojure in the NE

agile_geek17:06:51

It's just the community is quite enthusiastic. For example, most of the ppl I know who come to dojo's don't write Clojure in their day job...including me.

agile_geek17:06:09

It's just the community is quite enthusiastic. For example, most of the ppl I know who come to dojo's don't write Clojure in their day job...including me.

seancorfield17:06:28

That’s pretty similar to the Bay Area then: a handful of hardcore Clojure companies but a huge community of "interested" folks.

seancorfield17:06:55

When I spoke at two user group meetings in Australia, the attendance was great but almost no one was doing Clojure at work.

agile_geek17:06:18

Scala has a much bigger footprint in the UK. Including at least two Government departments and loads of Financial orgs.

seancorfield17:06:36

Yeah, Scala has much more penetration in the Bay Area at a corporate level. I suspect that’s true everywhere. I was mostly curious because the UK Clojure community seems so strong and so enthusiastic — it made me wonder if production use was anomalously higher back in my "home" country 😄

agile_geek17:06:48

The big names using Clojure to a great extent are probably USwitch and Daily Mail. Then there are banks with little pockets of Clojurians (sometimes non-production code like tooling and monitoring) this includes HSBC and Deutsche Bank. Then there's a number of start ups like Social Superstore, Mastodon C, http://Style.com. I think Thoughtworks encouraged a few orgs to try Clojure as well.

agile_geek18:06:13

I can't see Clojure ever being that big in UK but I think that means the start ups I mentioned may have a 'competitive advantage'. Most of my clients judge the tech they want to use on one factor - can I hire 300 dev's that can write in lang/framework x

glenjamin18:06:12

there’s some HSBC people who come to the DevOps meetup in Sheffield, they don’t strike me as people who would embrace clojure 😄

glenjamin18:06:36

or at least, they don’t strike me as people who have an org that would embrace Clojure

mccraigmccraig18:06:16

i kinda like the self-selection that is embodied in the clojure world - it would be nice if it was a bit easier to find good people, but it's great that i don't have to wade through lakes of people who have no interest in finding better ways of doing things

agile_geek19:06:20

@glenjamin: they use it around monitoring in London teams but I think, again, it's one or two influential individuals in a team.

agile_geek19:06:42

It's a shame that as I'm older and have a lot of family commitments I've effectively priced myself out of ever using Clojure unless I can fund my own s/w company 😦

seancorfield21:06:20

> can I hire 300 dev's that can write in lang/framework x Argh!!! 😠