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It's a mindset change. Other than macros, which fundamentally alter the flow of code in a very non-standard way, the rest of these "crazy patterns and features

It's a mindset change. Other than macros, which fundamentally alter the flow of code in a very non-standard way, the rest of these "crazy patterns and features" in Clojure are just like the crazy libraries used by typical Java/Ruby/C# developers, only thousands of times simpler. If I came to you and said, "does anyone even use these tens of thousands of libraries in Maven? How do other developers work on this afterwards, they'd have to learn all these new APIs!" I'd likely get a response like, "they'd just be expected to", with a chuckle. The mindset I've seen a lot is that language features are "too hard" to learn and should be avoided, but library complexity is beyond reproach and is rarely questioned. Clojure the language takes the approach that it's better to provide a dozen simple but incredibly composable tools that can easily replace a lot of duplicated boilerplate in other languages. Like these transducers, in Java/C# they'd likely be one of the design patterns that needs a whole set of classes to make what he shows in a few characters. Would you rather learn to write and read maintain a handful of classes, or just learn what those few characters mean? I don't get paid by the line, and any abstraction built into the language like that is a few more classes I don't have to maintain and possibly implement incorrectly in some subtle way. Like I said, it's just a mindset change. I know a company that only uses Clojure, and they hire a lot of entry level developers who haven't yet gotten stuck in a mindset that "languages are too hard; libraries are easy". They have great success with that, and their entry level guys are up to speed much faster than those in my shop, using .NET, where they have to learn a new language AND a mountain of boiler plate code using dozens of libraries and frameworks.

oafitupa 12y ago
> Would you rather learn to write and read maintain a handful of classes I appreciate your answer, but that's not what I do with libraries. I don't have to read their internals, let alone write them.
- JackMorgan 12y ago
  I may have communicated that badly. A pattern like transducers is one that everyone needs. Everyone either uses it built into the language or writes it out long form. Design patterns are a way of giving you instructions for writing it out long form. So, you either write it yourself or use it built in. Some people do not want to learn language tools that will reduce such boilerplate, but those people often are (ironically) happy to learn lots of libraries. Libraries by definition can't remove any more boilerplate than you can, they are just as limited by the language, so often times just save the user some writing, rather than reducing (haha) it across a whole codebase like a built in feature can.

oafitupa 12y ago

> Would you rather learn to write and read maintain a handful of classes I appreciate your answer, but that's not what I do with libraries. I don't have to read their internals, let alone write them.

JackMorgan 12y ago
I may have communicated that badly. A pattern like transducers is one that everyone needs. Everyone either uses it built into the language or writes it out long form. Design patterns are a way of giving you instructions for writing it out long form. So, you either write it yourself or use it built in. Some people do not want to learn language tools that will reduce such boilerplate, but those people often are (ironically) happy to learn lots of libraries. Libraries by definition can't remove any more boilerplate than you can, they are just as limited by the language, so often times just save the user some writing, rather than reducing (haha) it across a whole codebase like a built in feature can.