I consider it second class since very few people use it. IT makes harder for the developers who work there to market their skills. They stress way too much on the language, which worries me.
Languages like Clojure or Mumps are second class due to their lack of use in other organizations. I have heard tales of people not getting jobs because of extensive experience with MSFT stack. using a little known language like Clojure just complicates your case, how is it different from someone going with Mumps experience?
Maybe I got started on wrong foot here:
here is my analysis, hopefully non trollish
1. Their business seems to focused on analytics/data mining
2. In that case their primary requirement should be for people who have experience in distributed computing , map - reduce, data mining, visualization
3. Instead you find them talking about clojure, a language which has a very small user base and not at all used in ML / data mining.
4. This seems fishy I can name several startups identica, cellexis and other who are in nearly similar area, and you can have a look at their job requirements.
5. All above points lead me to conclude that this company is being run by people who focus too much on knowing a certain language, rather than focusing on tools of the trade. Which is un understandable.
6. It gives a feel that the company is looking for someone who can write automated sys admin scripts rather than work on acutal statistical models or interface. The latter two jobs are considered a bit more interesting than just cluster maintainace in clojure.
Regarding few points i made earlier:
1. Clojure is second class beacuse of lack of support or user group.
2. Regarding a comment by strlen on python not being used, python + hadoop streaming or python + c libraries are preffered solution in both research as well as production environments.
There are also quite a few good C++ libraries such as SNAP.
In my opinion if you are ending up working with java after using clojure it makes more sense to code in java itself. This actually describes a perfect case of creating lisp in your language of choice situation.
sorry but programming hacking/ data (not database) hacking are two different things.
I have met proud programmers who think that Maths/stats are shit.
Their aim as a company is to utilize the data collected by the website and build relevance models.
Such models are mathematical models. thus its important which equations you come up with and now which language you use to write them.
The reason I suggest Python / C++ / Java even R is that there is an extremely huge codebase in those languages.
e.g. can you show me anything that matches capabilities of numpy scipy or R packages or the amazing code which is available on this website http://mloss.org/software/. in clojure.
When data is at heart of your startup your focus should the models and not some weird programming language ideals.
infact it tell me that they are:
1: Bunch of programmers who have no expertise in Data Mining / Predictive Analytics.
2: Language nazi's and confused bunch who put up stuff like we love ruby, we adore clojure and you must play counter strike.
see this is my exact problem,no one outside HN gives a fuck about grammar in real world or about which programming language ideals you love in real life.
Flight Caster or the other company which google bought use huge data but with that they also use huge amount of rules.
They are developing rule systems and engines and not Not a data mining system.
The company in the post has a machine learning problem, what they require is fast matrix multiplication and great mathematical models and not some weird ass FP language ideals.
Go to mloss.org and look for projects that use FP languages.
in real life no one gives a fuck about lisp and other FP idiocacy, that why AI book by norvig has now code written in Python, thats why Google being one of the most leading AI companies uses C++ Python and Java.
Thats why you wont find any one in any data mining/ mahcine learning department in any US university MIT/CMU/Stanford using some shit FP lanuages.
Sorry, but I dont get point of using an Obscure language like Clojure.
Also how are they different from directed edge a YC funded start up.
If they are doing predictive analysis/machine learning stuff, It makes sense to use Java, Python and C in that order since Java is what Hadoop is written in, while python and C allow very low dev time and latter provides extremely fast execution.
Using an unproven second class language like clojure shows that the team behind this project has a little experience in statistical modeling and related fields.
No one case which lanugage you use if its FP or ruby or even worse fortran. In statistical modeling it finally boils down to fast execution of some sort of huge matrix multiplication.
Really the only concern w.r.t language is readability/ compatibility with existing systems and low dev. time
Languages like Clojure or Mumps are second class due to their lack of use in other organizations. I have heard tales of people not getting jobs because of extensive experience with MSFT stack. using a little known language like Clojure just complicates your case, how is it different from someone going with Mumps experience?