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I'm not sure if you're asking about the use of those specific literals or about the extensible reader, but there was a short interview with Rich Hickey about th

I'm not sure if you're asking about the use of those specific literals or about the extensible reader, but there was a short interview with Rich Hickey about the new extensible reader and there was valuable discussion on HN about it: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3831803 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3831803

darklajid 15y ago
Thanks, but no. I was explicitly referring to the instant literals and uuid literals. I honestly never missed something like that. They seemed esoteric, kind of. So I'm hoping for someone more knowledgeable than me chiming in and explaining possible drivers/motivations for these literals. When do you write a literal uuid?
- zephjc 15y ago
  I think it was a case of a couple useful examples of the new literals as a pattern for developers.
- djpowell 15y ago
  They are likely to be more useful when using Clojure as a serialisation syntax for data (much like how JSON is used with JavaScript), rather than when used directly in source code. I assume that these extensible literals will be ported to the JavaScript and .NET implementations of Clojure, making it easier to work with rich data types without having to pepper your code with calls to date parsing functions, etc. Having an intuitive, idiomatic concept of 'data' at the heart of your code is an important aspect of Clojure. In comparison, I find it hard to the answer the question, "How is data represented in Java?" Which is why I find doing things like data transformation to be far easier in Clojure than in Java.
- technomancy 15y ago
  Instant literals returning java.util.Date instances are a great way to sneak bugs into a codebase that uses immutable values everywhere else.
  - tensor 15y ago
    The mutable methods of the Date class all look to be deprecated. No?
    - technomancy 15y ago
      That doesn't stop them from being called. As soon as you introduce an object like this, you throw a bunch of important guarantees about your code out the window.
      - moomin 15y ago
        True. At least in Clojure you can change the default behaviour.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
- moomin 15y ago
  I think you'll find they're extremely useful for implementing Datomic.

darklajid 15y ago

Thanks, but no. I was explicitly referring to the instant literals and uuid literals. I honestly never missed something like that. They seemed esoteric, kind of. So I'm hoping for someone more knowledgeable than me chiming in and explaining possible drivers/motivations for these literals. When do you write a literal uuid?

zephjc 15y ago
I think it was a case of a couple useful examples of the new literals as a pattern for developers.
djpowell 15y ago
They are likely to be more useful when using Clojure as a serialisation syntax for data (much like how JSON is used with JavaScript), rather than when used directly in source code. I assume that these extensible literals will be ported to the JavaScript and .NET implementations of Clojure, making it easier to work with rich data types without having to pepper your code with calls to date parsing functions, etc. Having an intuitive, idiomatic concept of 'data' at the heart of your code is an important aspect of Clojure. In comparison, I find it hard to the answer the question, "How is data represented in Java?" Which is why I find doing things like data transformation to be far easier in Clojure than in Java.
technomancy 15y ago
Instant literals returning java.util.Date instances are a great way to sneak bugs into a codebase that uses immutable values everywhere else.
- tensor 15y ago
  The mutable methods of the Date class all look to be deprecated. No?
  - technomancy 15y ago
    That doesn't stop them from being called. As soon as you introduce an object like this, you throw a bunch of important guarantees about your code out the window.
    - moomin 15y ago
      True. At least in Clojure you can change the default behaviour.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
moomin 15y ago
I think you'll find they're extremely useful for implementing Datomic.