Clojerl: Bringing Clojure to the Erlang Ecosystem
Clojerl, an open-source project available on GitHub (https://github.com/clojerl/clojerl), aims to marry the power of the Clojure programming language with the robust ecosystem of the Erlang Virtual Machine (BEAM). The significance of this project lies in the prospect of leveraging the strengths of two influential technologies in the realm of software development.
Project Overview:
Clojerl targets a fundamental need among programmers – utilizing the simplicity and power of Clojure syntax and its paradigm of immutability, combining it with the concurrency model of Erlang. Historically, Clojure's dynamic nature and utilization of Java Virtual Machine (JVM) promoted it in Java-based applications, while Erlang's superior concurrency support found favour in systems requiring massive parallelism. By enabling Clojure on BEAM, Clojerl creates a platform that makes the strengths of both available in one place, targeting software developers seeking this unique combination.
Project Features:
Clojerl's power lies in its bid to support most Clojure features like protocols, multi-methods and destructuring while leveraging the Erlang ecosystem. This integration gives rise to features like process-based concurrency of Erlang with the immutable data structures of Clojure, which can be tremendous in increasing the efficiency of applications using these features. For instance, a web processing service might benefit from Erlang's concurrency model by serving multiple requests simultaneously while using Clojure's features to simplify the coding process.
Technology Stack:
This project utilizes Clojure, a dynamic, general-purpose programming language, and the Erlang ecosystem, known for concurrent, error-resistant systems. While Clojure has been chosen for its elegant syntax and strong emphasis on immutability, Erlang's BEAM is known for its robust concurrency, distribution and fault-tolerance capabilities – ideal for high-load system development. Notable Erlang libraries and tools also contribute to the success of this project.
Project Structure and Architecture:
Clojerl is primarily structured around the Clojure language's core, supporting the majority of its features. It does these by defining Clojure's standard library in Erlang. Consequently, the entire architecture of Clojure code can run on the Erlang VM, marrying their respective strengths. The project applies established design patterns of language inter-operability, aiming to combine two hugely successful programming paradigms.
