On Mon, Jun 18, 2012 at 3:37 PM, Kurt Harriger <kurtharri...@gmail.com>wrote:
> > Representations are values in Clojure, they are not mixed with behaviors > like in mainstream OO. It follows that, if your representation need to > change, you can write a converter function (or two if you want to convert > from and to the old representation), that's easy, easier than writing an > adapter class in Java because the adapter class must implement new > behaviors on top of old ones (or the other way round). > > > Isnt that just creating an api? Everywhere the old model exists you need > to call a function to create the desired data structure and this adds > another layer of complexity that needs maintained. Not all conversions are > straight forward, may require additional context of whatever introducing > the need for deferred computation. > It is creating a new API (as data). To me this discussion is about managing (API) change. Data as API won't solve all problems but it's easier to version/write/test compatibility layer for data than functions (methods) as API. When you start to refactor your data, you are effectively introducing a change in API and converters help you delimit the boundaries of the refactored module so that your changes don't ripple through the whole application. Inside: new format, outside old format. Each module can even have its own specialized data representation (optimized for its needs) and convert from and to a more "canonical" representation. This allows for more decoupling between modules. In this perspective functional accessors which you are advocating are micro-managing API changes at the field level: you expect your code (and thus algorithms) to stay the same no matter how the data is represented, while specialized representations would allow for better algorithms. Christophe -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Clojure" group. To post to this group, send email to clojure@googlegroups.com Note that posts from new members are moderated - please be patient with your first post. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/clojure?hl=en
