5 ms·

Clojure: Immutability at the Language Level

39 points by Raphael_Amiard 17y ago

dmlorenzetti 17y ago
After I got past the introduction, I liked this article a lot better. I like to focus on what something says, rather than on how it's written. Unfortunately, the introduction is so tangled and wordy, I found that hard to do. Example: "In many cases, purists see the essence of immutability as a precondition for any given language to fall into the category of functional programming." As an editor, I might suggest "Purists would say functional programming requires immutability." Example: "But we can extend the larger picture of immutability beyond the strict ecosystem of data structures alone and instead encompass any object that adheres to the notion of immutability." How about "But immutability applies to more than just data structures." Happily, where it talks about code, the article is pretty straightforward.
- fogus 17y ago
  Well, it made perfect sense to me! ;-) Seriously, I had a tendency to be a little ... verbose. The genius of the early access approach is that these types of things can be identified before print. Thank you.
  - dmlorenzetti 17y ago
    You're welcome. In fact the main reason I mentioned it was because it seemed like there might be time for feedback to make a difference.
- robak 17y ago
  In my opinion original (i.e. "wordy") sentences are much better. Too many technical books that are dry. Keep it wordy please! Short & concise isn't fun after 100th page...
dpritchett 17y ago
The intro implies that this article is an excerpt from the MEAP edition of The Joy of Clojure. I don't recognize a lot of it from my 4-chapter MEAP copy. Is there a new push due out soon?
- fogus 17y ago
  It's mostly from the next MEAP update -- available soon. (I wish I had a better estimate than that, but we tend to be the last to know about these things)
  - dpritchett 17y ago
    Thanks! For what it's worth I've enjoyed the first four chapters well enough to recommend it to any other prospective buyers.
mark_l_watson 17y ago
Good article! I don't use Clojure much, but the language is fun to code in. I bought the MEAP, and I am looking forward to updates. BTW, I fortunately don't have to code in Java too much anymore, but when I do I have been favoring read-only objects.

After I got past the introduction, I liked this article a lot better. I like to focus on what something says, rather than on how it's written. Unfortunately, the introduction is so tangled and wordy, I found that hard to do. Example: "In many cases, purists see the essence of immutability as a precondition for any given language to fall into the category of functional programming." As an editor, I might suggest "Purists would say functional programming requires immutability." Example: "But we can extend the larger picture of immutability beyond the strict ecosystem of data structures alone and instead encompass any object that adheres to the notion of immutability." How about "But immutability applies to more than just data structures." Happily, where it talks about code, the article is pretty straightforward.

fogus 17y ago
Well, it made perfect sense to me! ;-) Seriously, I had a tendency to be a little ... verbose. The genius of the early access approach is that these types of things can be identified before print. Thank you.
- dmlorenzetti 17y ago
  You're welcome. In fact the main reason I mentioned it was because it seemed like there might be time for feedback to make a difference.
robak 17y ago
In my opinion original (i.e. "wordy") sentences are much better. Too many technical books that are dry. Keep it wordy please! Short & concise isn't fun after 100th page...

dpritchett 17y ago

The intro implies that this article is an excerpt from the MEAP edition of The Joy of Clojure. I don't recognize a lot of it from my 4-chapter MEAP copy. Is there a new push due out soon?

fogus 17y ago
It's mostly from the next MEAP update -- available soon. (I wish I had a better estimate than that, but we tend to be the last to know about these things)
- dpritchett 17y ago
  Thanks! For what it's worth I've enjoyed the first four chapters well enough to recommend it to any other prospective buyers.

mark_l_watson 17y ago

Good article! I don't use Clojure much, but the language is fun to code in. I bought the MEAP, and I am looking forward to updates. BTW, I fortunately don't have to code in Java too much anymore, but when I do I have been favoring read-only objects.