HN user
Lots of languages claim they are Scheme or Lisp dialects (JavaScript, Python, Ruby, Lua and others) in order to boost their popularity even though they have none of Lisp's unique features but just the general features you would expect to find in any dynamically typed languages.
That's a bit sad a great language like Haskell (I haven't personally used it but heard great things about it) is used for a hippie thing such as Facebook. Facebook doesn't even have much of a future, its a hippie fad just like Myspace was, eventually they'll get bored and find some new hippiespace social network: Snapchat, Whatsapp, whatever.
That's the lack of higher order functions and the lack of first class functions. Anyway I think higher order functions and method references have been added to Java 8 as well as Lambda functions.
Java has functions one word "static".
More like its FKF (Fear of the Known and Familiar). Most (if not all) programmers have experience with static typing and most of those experiences were not pleasant hence why a lot of people don't like static typing. People start to hate it even more when it gets shoved down their throats i.e. "You must absolutely must use static typing otherwise your software is unreliable and buggy".
Static typing requires discipline, it is no magic cure for bugs which will automatically make your programs correct, same way forcing everything to be in class in Java does not automatically make readable, modular and reusable code, its just restrictive and annoying.
The disciplines required for static typing to be effective can be employed in dynamic typing however merely having a static type system does not mean the discipline will be developed. In order for a static type system to not be restrictive (like Java's or C++'s) it has to be flexible i.e. it has allow types of varying degrees of vagueness. If I am an inexperienced programmer with no discipline nothing stops me from picking the vaguest type possible and making a complete mess. Type errors do not prevent all bugs, in-fact they prevent only a minimal subset of bugs, most bugs are related to logic errors involving an ill-thought out algorithm or data errors related to invalid data provided by the user which often can only be caught by dynamic type systems.
Why is Java one the of really awful ones? I know Java is not the best language, it's not my favorite language, but I wouldn't say its really awful.
Doesn't Clojure already have optional static type annotations like Common Lisp? I thought it did when I looked through the tutorials.
In Common Lisp you can define pretty much any type (with deftype), you can define algebraic types and even value dependent types. Once you add full type declarations to your code, you will get warnings for inconsistent and violated type declarations.