Re: how to get good at clojure?

[Daniel Gagnon]

On Mon, May 7, 2012 at 8:48 PM, toan  wrote:

> Hi folks,
>
> I've been trying to learn clojure for a while. I've read the clojure
> section of "seven languages..." and currently trying to get through
> "joy of clojure." I've been practicing with the prompt a bit and
> trying to learn emacs that came with "clojurebox."
>
>
The clojure part of "seven languages" isn't very idiomatic.

Try Programming Clojure 2n Edition by Stuart Halloway, I think it's the
best learning book.

And clojurebox is quite outdated give a try to lein and the clooj editor.

I have 2 questions, 1. does anyone have advice on getting somewhat
> competent for a newb? (alternatively, how did you get good?)


Code until it "clicks", then progress gets much faster.


> 2. if i
> have no interest in java, should a learn at least some fundamentals?
> would that be helpful?
>
>
Try reading some javadoc and see if it makes sense to you. Learning Java
isn't critical to start but eventually, you'll want to use Java libraries
and then it's best to have some basics.


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Re: Using the Clojure Logo

[Daniel Gagnon]

>
> As far as I know the Clojure logo is not currently trademarked.
>

You can have a trademark without registering anything (registration is
somewhere between $200 and $300 in the US, I forgot the exact amount), it's
just harder to demonstrate without a registration than copyright.

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Re: Using the Clojure Logo

[Daniel Gagnon]

>
> First of all, one only has to police unauthorized use of the
> trademark. One can authorize its use under particular circumstances,
> and then those uses don't need to be policed to avoid losing the
> trademark.
>
>
That's at the heart of trademark law. A trademark is a form of "Proof of
origin". If you see Mickey Mouse in a movie, you can assume it's Disney.
This is why you can lose trademarks. If you let people use it for whatever
they want then it's not a proof of origin any more.


> Second, trademark law only covers "use in commerce". Use on a personal
> webpage would not be covered, and would not have to be policed or risk
> losing the mark. Use on a commercial site (which might be broadly
> inclusive of, for instance, pages with revenue-generating ads) might
> be another matter, if it's seen as implying an endorsement or a claim
> to be the product/service the mark names. But...
>

No you can't. That leads to trademark dilution.


> Third, use of the mark in a purely factual manner is not, to my
> knowledge, governed by law. So, a store needn't negotiate a license
> with Coca Cola Inc. to say they have Coca Cola for sale, at least as
> long as they aren't lying. Saying a site is powered by X, when it
> really is powered by X, may fall under the same rule, given that
> there's no implication that the site *is* X or is endorsed by X.
>

It is actually the purpose of the law. If you see the Coca Cola logo in a
store, you can expect genuine Coca Cola.

"Powered by" may or may not count, I don't think it has been tested in a
court of law.


> Identifying a noncommercial user group as a Clojure user group would
> be analogous to identifying a noncommercial Web site as powered by
> Clojure, to my mind. Trademark law would not apply, and Rich wouldn't
> risk losing the trademark by not sending a lawyer after the group.
>

It absolutely would. Not sure if it would be fine or not as mentioned
above.


> However, an earlier post claimed Rich had *copyrighted* the logo,
> which is another kettle of fish.


Copyright is automatic since 1976. All registration does is having the
copyright office they did see your work on a given date. It is by no mean a
requirement.


> On the one hand there's no need to
> police use or risk losing a copyright; on the other, a copyright
> covers noncommercial use as well as commercial. I'm not sure how
> copyrightable a fairly simple logo design really is, though. There are
> circumstances that exempt one from needing a copyright license, "fair
> use", that tend to include noncommercial activities that don't harm
> the copyright holder's market. If Rich has copyrighted the logo, but
> isn't selling copies or cheap licenses to use it, a noncommercial use
> might well be found to be a fair use.
>

Using the logo seems fair use to me. However trademark and copyright laws
are independent. You can infringe one one while respecting the other.



> Personally, I think it would be silly to block uses of the logo to
> refer to Clojure in circumstances that don't imply an endorsement that
> doesn't exist, but obviously Rich is not obligated to share my opinion
> of what would be silly.


I think we would avoid lots of headaches and legal gray areas by having
official "powered by" logos.

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Re: Using the Clojure Logo

[Daniel Gagnon]

On Wed, Mar 28, 2012 at 1:40 PM, Chip Collier  wrote:

> I was also intending on using the logo in such a way to communicate that
> a site I'm building is "powered by clojure" or something to that effect
> with a link to clojure.org. Is that frowned upon?
>
> Chip


Unfortunately, trademark laws are written in such a way that allowing this
risk making Rich lose his trademark. If he knows about it, he must put a
stop to it otherwise he can't claim to own the trademark. This is quite
different from copyrights where you are the author no matter what.

Most projects get around that with an officially endorsed "powered by"
graphic for such purposes.

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Re: Has anyone solved the zebra/einstein puzzle using core.logic?

[Daniel Gagnon]

>
>
> p.s: If someone thinks that the zebra puzzle is too complicated as a first
> example please don't hesitate to say so...I recently purchased "the
> reasoned schemer" (hasn't arrived yet) which hopefully explains things at a
> good pace.
>
>
It's actually pretty simple. Take a look at the Prolog version:
http://en.literateprograms.org/Zebra_Puzzle_(Prolog)

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Re: Clojure code optimizer

[Daniel Gagnon]

>
> This isn't a big issue, as recursive functions aren't much advised in
> Clojure. However, ideal solution would be to detect tail calls and rewrite
> block in loop/recur combo. This would allow Clojure to fully reuse TCO
> without waiting for JVM to implement it (which will probably never happen).
>

Not all tail calls are self-recursion. If you call a different function in
tail position, there would be no TCO which if I remember correctly is why
Rich added recur instead of optimizing self-recursion. He doesn't want to
fool you into believing that Clojure supports TCO when it doesn't.

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Re: A New Core.logic Primer

[Daniel Gagnon]

On Thu, Mar 15, 2012 at 3:08 PM, Sean Corfield wrote:

> On Thu, Mar 15, 2012 at 10:49 AM, David Nolen 
> wrote:
> >> > It's a convention from The Reasoned Schemer. It's just an easy way to
> >> > differentiate goals from regular functions.
>
> What's the rationale in TRS for that? (and "conde") Like Phil (and no
> doubt others) it seems an odd convention, without explanation.
>
> >> Wouldn't it be more idiomatic Clojure to use namespaces?
>
> That was my first reaction too.
>
>
I find it a jarring clash with the rest of Clojure because I'm used to see
things that are elegant or being given a good rationale of how it's a good
trade-off for practical purposes. Here, it seems arbitrary and it just
doesn't feel righto.

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Re: A New Core.logic Primer

[Daniel Gagnon]

Could this tutorial explain the foremost question people have when seeing
core.logic: why is o appened to the names of all those functions?

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Re: A New Core.logic Primer

[Daniel Gagnon]

>
>
>> Dan, you probably read that recently about Datalog, while you were
> reviewing Datomic. Ain't that right? :)
>
>
I didn't check out Datomic yet. I'll do that soon.

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Re: A New Core.logic Primer

[Daniel Gagnon]

On Wed, Mar 14, 2012 at 3:00 PM, David Nolen  wrote:

> Thanks to Edmund Jackson we have a new primer for core.logic:
> https://github.com/clojure/core.logic/wiki/A-Core.logic-Primer
>
> Feedback appreciated!
>
> David
>

It's pretty good and I think it's very accessible. If you compare to Learn
Prolog Now!  it
lacks in the Pulp Fiction references department but it's still good.

I think you should say a word about prolog and mention that unlike it
core.logic isn't turing complete and can't have infinite loops (unless I'm
mistaken about core.logic).

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Re: [ANN] clojure-py 0.1.0 Clojure on Python

[Daniel Gagnon]

On Wed, Mar 7, 2012 at 10:42 PM, Timothy Baldridge wrote:

> The Clojure-Py team is happy to announce the release of Clojure-Py 0.1.0.
>
> https://github.com/halgari/clojure-py
>
> Clojure-Py is an implementation of Clojure running atop the Python VM.
> As it currently stands, we have translated over 235 functions from
> clojure.core. This is not a clojure interpreter in python; the
> Clojure-Py compiler compiles clojure code directly to python code.
> Clojure-py functions are python functions. Clojure-py types are python
> types, Clojure-py name spaces are python modules
>

I'm seeing a RPython test in the examples. Can Clojure-Py emit RPython code
from my Clojure code? If so, that'd be really great we could go Clojure ->
RPython -> C -> Native

I guess it probably isn't since I imagine that laziness uses generators
which aren't well supported under RPython but if it did use make RPython
code, it'd be really awesome.

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Re: [ANN] clojure-py 0.1.0 Clojure on Python

[Daniel Gagnon]

>
> Actually Python fractions would work perfectly. And the decimal class
> in Python should be included as well.
>
> Thanks for pointing these libraries out to me!
>
> Timothy
>

>

No problem. I really like how symbiotic with Python you are making this.

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Re: [ANN] clojure-py 0.1.0 Clojure on Python

[Daniel Gagnon]

On Thu, Mar 8, 2012 at 10:53 AM, Timothy Baldridge wrote:

> > What's the plan for ratios and characters?  I assume they're still on
> > the TODO list?  (Maybe Issue 17 covers the ratios?)
>
> Yeah, I need to run a few more tests, but I'm thinking of somehow
> layering libgmp ontop of Python in order to implement ratios.
>
>
Why wouldn't Python fractions work as ratios?

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Re: Clojure in Python

[Daniel Gagnon]

>
> Well first of all, the real main drive, is that I don't know Java libs
> nearly as well as Python libs. Secondly, there's a lot of cruft (imo)
> in Clojure that doesn't need to exist in a dynamic VM. For instance,
> there's no reason to new up something with (Foo. 1 2). In python
> objects are functions, so (Foo 1 2) works just fine.
>

On a similar note, are you using Python's approach to characters (they are
simply a string of length 1)?

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Could be my favourite improvement in 1.4

[Daniel Gagnon]

Allow colon as whitespace in map
literals

That's a very subtle subtle change but with this it will be easier to
experiment with JSON or Python data I want to just grab and paste.

That attention to little detail is very appreciated.

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Re: Alright, fess up, who's unhappy with clojurescript?

[Daniel Gagnon]

>
> I like CoffeeScript. But CoffeeScript is largely syntactic sugar. Hardly
> anything in the way of new semantics. And it encourages traditional stateful
> OOP and classical inheritance.
>
> Underscore.js does what it can, but it's goals are largely trumped by
> CoffeeScript.
>
> David
>
> CoffeeScript and Coco are largely Javascript. I'm just saying they are a
fairer comparison than naked Javascript. Especially when we speak about how
awkward it is to write Javascript.

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Re: Alright, fess up, who's unhappy with clojurescript?

[Daniel Gagnon]

>
> Javascript is simply painful to use functionally. The verbosity of
> anonymous functions, the lack of crucial HOFs like map/filter/reduce, the
> lack of functional data structures, the lack of macros (not strictly a
> "functional" feature, but especially useful with functional code)... You can
> fix these to varying degrees with libraries; but in any case the overall
> superiority of Clojure syntax and data structures must be obvious to anyone
> interested in ClojureScript, since those are the sole advantages it provides
> over Javascript.
>
>
The verbosity of anonymous function (and much more) is fixed by CoffeeScript
and Coco[1] and the lack of crucial HOFs is fixed by underscore.js

1: Coco is a CoffeeScript fork that fixes the main issues CoffeeScript have
(example: CoffeeScript's scope is broken).

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Java 7 is out!

[Daniel Gagnon]

So, what does it means for Clojure?

Faster execution? Some new interesting stuff in the standard Java library?

And I remember there was something about forkjoin that would be good for
Clojure, what about that?

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Silly algorithm

[Daniel Gagnon]

I found on Twitter the implementation of the latest stupid algorithm: sleep
sort. The idea behind sleep sort is that you sleep in parallel for a number
of second equal to the value of each cell and emit them as you finish
sleeping. The algorithm is said to run in O(lol^n)

The canonical implementation is:

#!/bin/bashfunction f() {
sleep "$1"
echo "$1"}while [ -n "$1" ]do
f "$1" &
shiftdonewait



I found a clojure version on twitter:

(pmap #(do (Thread/sleep (* %1 1000)) (println %1)) '(5 1 3 6 2))

But I wasn't satisfied with it as it directly prints the list and doesn't
return a useful value.
So here's my version:

(defn sleep-sort [coll]
  (let [result (agent [])
coll-length (count coll)]
(dorun (pmap #(do
   (Thread/sleep (* % 1000))
   (send result conj %)) coll))
 (while (not= (count @result) coll-length) (Thread/sleep 1000))
@result))

How would you implement it?

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Google Refine

[Daniel Gagnon]

Google just launched and interesting power tool to clean up messy data which
you might want to look at:

http://code.google.com/p/google-refine/wiki/Screencasts

Sounds pretty nifty isn't it?

What they do not mention in the screencast (or anywhere else for that
matter), is that it comes with clojure bundled in.

Try to create a "custom text facet" in it and clojure will be offered as one
of the 3 languages you can transform your data with.

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Re: can I force the JIT to be called immediately for certain pieces of code after it starts executing with out waiting for the JVM realize it is necessary....

[Daniel Gagnon]

>
>
> Even if the JVM put the code through the compiler right away, the
> resulting code wouldn't be very good because it will have not had time
> to profile code to apply the more powerful optimizations. It would be
> throwing all of that code away once it has had time to profile the
> code, so any time spent JITing the code before then is most likely not
> worth it.


Exactly. You can't apply Just-In-Time techniques Ahead-Of-Time. Pretty much
by definition.

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Re: Being "not Lisp" is a feature?

[Daniel Gagnon]

On Tue, Nov 16, 2010 at 3:59 PM,  wrote:

> Daniel Gagnon  wrote ..
> > I spoke to the guys on reddit. They said it is tongue-in-cheek.
>
> > They have no knowledge of functional programming
>
> ???
>
> > but strongly feel it isn't suited to their field.
>
> ???
>
> Isn't this a bit contradictory ? It's ok to follow your own gut feeling but
> it needs to be supported somehow by tangible facts.
>
> At least we laughed about it.
>
> Luc P.
>
>
Absolutely.

On the other hand, the target market of their language is large corporations
that wouldn't touch lisp for social reasons (has to be classically object
oriented or else it won't be considered) so to them not being a lisp is a
feature but it doesn't really excuse dissing it while only knowing the
wikipedia summary of functional languages.

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Re: Being "not Lisp" is a feature?

[Daniel Gagnon]

I spoke to the guys on reddit. They said it is tongue-in-cheek. They have no
knowledge of functional programming but strongly feel it isn't suited to
their field.

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Re: Clojure ensure

[Daniel Gagnon]

On Wed, Sep 15, 2010 at 10:44 AM, Stuart Halloway  wrote:

> Encounter time. I am sitting next to Rich as I write this.
>

Guaranteed or implementation detail?

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Re: Clojure ensure

[Daniel Gagnon]

The first one is correct.

On Tue, Sep 14, 2010 at 3:22 PM, peter veentjer wrote:

> I have got a question about the Clojure ensure and how it actually
> works and the documentation doesn't provide enough information.
>
> I see a few different solutions:
>
> 1) An optimistic approach: Once a ref is 'ensured' it is included in
> the conflict detection set. This means that the approach is still
> completely optimistic because 2 concurrent transactions that have the
> same ensured ref, one of them is going to fail when the transaction
> wants to commit. This is a commit time ensure.
>
> 2) The other approach is a more pessimistic approach where a ref can
> be protected against writes made by other transaction as soon as it is
> ensured. It still allows reads to happen, but a write/ensure is going
> to fail. It could be compared to a oracle 'select.. for update'. This
> is an encounter time ensure.
>
>

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Re: Lisp/Scheme Style Guide

[Daniel Gagnon]

>
> I think it would be great if an official "clojure-fmt" tool existed.
> I have no interest in forcing people to use it who don't want to.  But
> I think it would set a great baseline for IDEs and would be helpful to
> the people and teams who like having coding standards.  I would be one
> of a number of people who would voluntarily use such a tool.


I would too because I prefer a good and predictable format to a perfect one
I'm the only one to use. Also if that tool is customizable, people could use
it format source to their own preferences out of git when they pull and
format it back when they push.

I don't think there's something special about Python that makes it more
suitable to something like PEP 8. If Python users were like Lisp users,
they'd bicker incessantly about how how much space in indentation but Guido
said it's 4 spaces and that's it.

I don't believe we can find *the* one style but I would like someone with
sufficient clout to suggest *a* style.

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Re: Can Clojure compile a source-file? How does it do it?

[Daniel Gagnon]

On Sun, Sep 5, 2010 at 5:11 PM, Stuart Sierra
wrote:

> Clojure compiles sources to Java ".class" files. To create a .class
> file that can be run at the command line, you need a namespace with a
> (:gen-class) directive and a function named "-main".  Here's an
> example:
>

I think the question was about how clojure works under the hood and how it
can guarantee the same behaviour when compiled as when interactively typed.

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Re: Lisp/Scheme Style Guide

[Daniel Gagnon]

>
>a) Python doesn't really have this problem
>

Python doesn't have this problem because the canonical style is define by
PEP 8 and Pythonistas love simplicity through conventions.

PEP 8: http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0008/

I think it's actually a great feature of the language, I almost never got
code that didn't match or nearly matched PEP 8. Google's go goes even
further by having the canonical style define by gofmt. Once your code is
written, you run it through gofmt and it turns canonical. If your code
doesn't look nice after gofmt, you must file a bug against gofmt rather than
hand tweak the formatting.

I'd be all for having clojure-fmt that would format clojure code in the way
Rich prefers it so that when I get random code I could convert it to a nice
and predictable format. It should be even simpler to write for a lisp than
other languages.

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Re: What is reference?

[Daniel Gagnon]

On Mon, Aug 16, 2010 at 11:54 AM, HB  wrote:

> Excellent explanation, thanks Nicolas :)
> Are Refs unique to Clojure or they exist in all Lisps?
>
>
They are a big part of why Clojure was created in the first place.

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Re: AOT compilation and calling Clojure from Java

[Daniel Gagnon]

>
>
> Any suggestions?
>
>
Can you run:
javap  YourClass.class

and give us the result?

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Re: Basic Lisp Compiler: How to tell which functions to compile?

[Daniel Gagnon]

As far as I know, the book "Lisp In Small Pieces" should be a tremendous
help for anyone who builds a Lisp interpreter or compiler. You might want to
check it out.

On Mon, Aug 9, 2010 at 2:21 PM, CuppoJava wrote:

> Thanks for the reply Jarkko. That helps quite a lot. I have some hacks
> in place that works most of the time, but was stuck trying to figure
> out a general solution. Knowing that there isn't one puts my mind at
> ease.
>  -Patrick
>
> On Aug 9, 1:56 pm, Jarkko Oranen  wrote:
> > On Aug 9, 7:54 pm, CuppoJava  wrote:
> >
> > > Hello everyone,
> > > Just for educational purposes, I'm writing a simple lisp compiler and
> > > am stuck on a small problem.
> >
> > > I'm trying to write a function called (compile-function), which will
> > > take a function as input and compile it.
> >
> > > If that function calls other functions, I would like (compile-
> > > function) to automatically compile the called functions as well.
> >
> > > But I'm stuck on how to tell whether a function will be called or not.
> > > Particularly when functions are passed around as objects.
> >
> > > So the question is this: Given a function f, how can I find all the
> > > functions that f depends on?
> >
> > I don't think that's feasible, if it's even possible in the first
> > place.
> >
> > Functions that the parent function calls directly you can of course
> > try to compile whatever you encounter in a function call form; just
> > check if the operator is a known global function, and compile it.
> > However, if the operator is a local variable (ie. a function passed as
> > a parameter) there's no reliable way to find out what function it is.
> > It might even be a runtime-generated function (by eval)
> >
> > Since you can't know what functions will be called, the generated code
> > must somehow verify that it's calling a function in the first place,
> > perhaps invoke the compiler (if all functions must be compiled), and
> > then execute it.
> >
> > --
> > Jarkko
>
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Re: Keywords also have a literal syntax

[Daniel Gagnon]

On Wed, Aug 4, 2010 at 1:33 AM, vishy  wrote:

> What does it mean? Does it mean that :hello itself is a value,so we
> call it literal syntax.Also,  this form of vector [1 2 3] is also
> literal syntax.
>


A vector evaluates all of its arguments. If I write [1 2 (+ 1 2)], I'll get
the same vector you got with [1 2 3]. Keywords always evaluate to
themselves.

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Re: Running on .Net

[Daniel Gagnon]

What I'd like is easy instructions for going from zero to repl so I can try
it out.

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Re: Records can't be treated as functions anymore

[Daniel Gagnon]

>
>
> Hi BG,
> It is a common mistake to think that callability, corresponding to the
> clojure.lang.IFn interface, is part of the persistent map contract
> (I've done it myself, as did many others a Conj labs :). It is not. It
> is actually just a feature of clojure.lang.PersistentHashMap (and the
> other clojure map implementations).
>
>
While I get that part, I wonder why records do not implement IFn, it'd be
convenient if they did.

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Re: Leiningen 1.2.0 released!

[Daniel Gagnon]

On Tue, Jul 20, 2010 at 9:51 AM, Phil Hagelberg  wrote:

> On Mon, Jul 19, 2010 at 3:00 PM, Daniel Gagnon 
> wrote:
> > By the way, what's left to do for the Windows support to stop being
> > experimental?
>
> Mostly we need volunteers to port the changes from the bash script to the
> batch file and test the changes. Also I don't think the self-install feature
> will ever work with lein.bat due to the lack of a way to download files. We
> may switch to a powershell script to work around this limitation; I don't
> know enough about Windows to say if that's a good idea.
>
>
>
Bummer, I know nothing about batch files...

As for the self install, what about writing the downloader in Java and
invoking it from the batch file?

Or using izPack which is the most popular next-next-finish installer for
Java? It would be very idiomatic for Windows.

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Re: Leiningen 1.2.0 released!

[Daniel Gagnon]

Impressive list of new features!

By the way, what's left to do for the Windows support to stop being
experimental?

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Re: Clojure noob: refactoring factorial code

[Daniel Gagnon]

There's no reason to recur at all:

(defn factorial [n] (reduce * (range 1 (inc n

On Thu, Jul 15, 2010 at 9:49 AM, Frederick Polgardy wrote:

> You don't need to recur to another function, just recur to a loop:
>
> (defn factorial [n]
>  (loop [x n acc 1]
>(if (zero? x) acc (recur (dec x) (* acc x)
>
> (println (factorial 5))
>
> --
> Science answers questions; philosophy questions answers.
>
> On Jul 15, 2010, at 6:38 AM, Brisance wrote:
>
> > Here's a factorial function as found in the WikiBook "Learning
> > Clojure" :
> >
> > (defn factorial [n]
> >  (defn fac [n acc]
> >(if (zero? n)
> >   acc
> >  (recur (- n 1) (* acc n ; recursive call to fac, but reuses
> > the stack; n will be (- n 1), and acc will be (* acc n)
> >  (fac n 1))
> >
> > Question: how would I go about writing idiomatic Clojure to return
> > factorials of n, for large values of n. e.g. 1e6 or more? Preferably
> > without having to create another function.
> >
> > Thanks in advance for any insight.
> >
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Re: Idiomatic Clojure namespace names

[Daniel Gagnon]

>
>
> Why would you ever type that more than once? Just use :as.
>
>
Because you use it in more than one file / project.

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Re: Link to API document in the cheat sheet

[Daniel Gagnon]

And uses '() for an empty list while () is more idiomatic.

On Sun, Jul 4, 2010 at 1:48 PM, ataggart  wrote:

> The cheatsheet is out of date (e.g., still has 'lazy-cons, old meaning
> of 'next).
>
>
> On Jul 2, 2:11 pm, ngocdaothanh  wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > This is my nth attempt to learn Clojure.
> >
> > I think it will be an improvement if there are links to API document
> > for functions in the cheat sheet (http://clojure.org/cheatsheet).
> > Clicking a function name will jump right to the description for the
> > function is very convenient for newbies.
>
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Re: Managing the classpath

[Daniel Gagnon]

That's really convenient to know! I just symlinked clojure.jar to
/usr/share/java where all the java jars are on k/ubuntu and now I just have
to have those two lines in my .bashrc file:

export CLASSPATH=.:/usr/share/java/*
alias clj="rlwrap java clojure.main"

On Thu, Jul 1, 2010 at 10:29 AM, Laurent PETIT wrote:

> Hello,
>
> note that with java 6 you can specify at once to add all the jars
> located in a directory:
>
> java -cp "libs/*" clojure.main
>
>

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Re: Record bug?

[Daniel Gagnon]

Is it by design or it just doesn't implement it yet?

On Tue, Jun 29, 2010 at 4:14 PM, Moritz Ulrich  wrote:

> I think record doen't implements all the stuff a PersistentMap
> implementes. It implementes the interface for map-lookup (with get and
> :foo) but doesn't implements IFn (for using an instance as a
> function).
>
> On Tue, Jun 29, 2010 at 9:16 PM, Daniel Gagnon 
> wrote:
> > Under the latest snapshot of the equiv branch (07f05862c2), if I create a
> > record:
> > (defrecord MyRecord [foo bar baz])
> > and then create a record out of it:
> > (def x (MyRecord. 1 2 3))
> > I can use a keyword as a function to get the data:
> > (:foo x)
> > 1
> > But if I use the record as a function like I would for a map, I get an
> > error:
> > (x :foo)
> > java.lang.ClassCastException: user.MyRecord cannot be cast to
> > clojure.lang.IFn
> > Is that a bug or is there something I don't get about records?
> >
> > --
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>
>
> --
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> Programmer, Student, Almost normal Guy
>
> http://www.google.com/profiles/ulrich.moritz
>
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Record bug?

[Daniel Gagnon]

Under the latest snapshot of the equiv branch (07f05862c2), if I create a
record:

(defrecord MyRecord [foo bar baz])

and then create a record out of it:

(def x (MyRecord. 1 2 3))

I can use a keyword as a function to get the data:

(:foo x)
1

But if I use the record as a function like I would for a map, I get an
error:

(x :foo)
java.lang.ClassCastException: user.MyRecord cannot be cast to
clojure.lang.IFn

Is that a bug or is there something I don't get about records?

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Re: Clojure's n00b attraction problem

[Daniel Gagnon]

On Tue, Jun 29, 2010 at 12:39 AM, Brent Millare wrote:

> While I agree his wording wasn't really the best, I think it can also
> be interpreted differently depending on what kind of n00b he is
> talking about.


Your wording isn't much better or maybe it's the idea underneath that
doesn't sit right. You basically said "They are newbs who couldn't grasp our
language, we are elite but there's no shame in being a newb because what we
do is so hard!"

It's not harder to learn Clojure's concurrency than pointers or tons of
others things we teach beginners every day. I'd totally teach clojure as a
first language.

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Re: Clojure's n00b attraction problem

[Daniel Gagnon]

>
> If folks find the Java stack intimidating, maybe Clojure isn't for
> them? Lots of language run on the JVM and they all require some basic
> knowledge of classpaths, build tools and existing IDEs such as
> Ecliper, NetBeans, IntelliJ etc. If folks are new to all that, I don't
> think it's Clojure's job to teach them - there's plenty of literature
> out there about the JVM environment and tools.
>
>
Groovy have an out of the box editor you just have to double-click to start.
Jython have an installer. Other JVM languages are ahead of clojure for
out-of-the-box ease of use. Lacking in that regard is *not* a feature. Also,
it's unreasonable to expect people to understand all the complex java ways
when they start out with the language. There is a lot of documentation about
Java, but how are newbs supposed to know where to start?

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Re: Clojure's n00b attraction problem

[Daniel Gagnon]

>
> 1. you don't have to worry about PYTHONPATH for a while with a
> standard install, although the day will come
> 2. you have to understand the difference between class files and jars
> (PATH vs PATH/*)
>
>
No, you never have to.It's taken care of by virtualenv.

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Re: Clojure's n00b attraction problem

[Daniel Gagnon]

>
> Wrong/Misinformed ideas:
> - Clojure 1.1 is not out of date. While it may seem to an outsider that you
> need to be on 1.2 you would be very wrong. 1.2 certainly brings great things
> to the table but they are built upon having a good understanding of what
> currently exists in 1.1. Staying off the cutting edge really prevents a lot
> of headaches. If you want to be on the cutting edge you are probably
> expecting headaches and maybe even actively involved in fixing them.
>
>
Then why is labrepl relying on 1.2?

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Re: Clojure's n00b attraction problem

[Daniel Gagnon]

>
>
> Is this what you're reallying advocating Clojure to become- Basic 2.0?
>
> Brian
>
>
Clojure the language is nice and very teachable.

But the environment around it is an ogre (it has layers). No one argued
anything about changing clojure-the-language to be more newb-friendly, only
clojure-setting-up-the-damn-environment.

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Re: the joys of lisp

[Daniel Gagnon]

>
>
> I actually agree with you that the typical block of lisp code is less
> readable than the typical block of python. It bugs me when lisp
> advocates present s-expr syntax as the "right" way instead of the
> engineering tradeoff that it is.


This is mostly due to Python's "There is only one obvious way to do it"
which makes reading code much simpler. On the other hand it is possible but
harder to make lisp code as readable (my code became much more readable
after I discovered the threading macros for instance) and often lisp is
harder to read per line but does much more in that small amount of space
than another language would. Same principle as yet another Java class full
of getters and setters being trivial to read but not getting much done per
line.

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Re: Clojure's n00b attraction problem

[Daniel Gagnon]

>
> I'm not so sure. Certainly things like the poignant guide made getting
> started with Ruby easier, but I'd argue that the success of Ruby has a
> lot more to do with how simple the core language it is and how easy it
> makes it to get simple things done.


I'd argue it's both. Yes the language is elegant but you can't know until
you try it and if it's a pain in the ass to try, you'll try something else.
If you want to get started on Ruby and you ask people pointers, they'll tell
you to read the Poignant Guide and from there, it's a smooth ride.


> Conversely, despite increasingly
> beginner-friendly docs and one-shot installers I don't get the
> impression there's a bit upsurge of interest in Haskell outside of
> circles of elites or language afficionados.
>

It's doing very well for a language that attempts not to be popular.


> Again though, I'm all for making the beginner's experience no harder
> than it absolutely has to be. No point having people turned away by
> things extrinsic to the language.
>
>
Getting started in clojure seems to suffer from a lot of incidental
complexity. Quite ironic.


> I often find myself frustrated browsing through the docs that there
> aren't concrete examples for most of the functions in the API. I
> always have to google their usage or find an example in the clojure
> code. I'd be happy to help flesh out the docs with some usage examples
> if this kind of help is wanted.


 Hell yes! What about a clojure cookbook? We could link all the functions in
the API to examples where they are used.

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Re: Clojure's n00b attraction problem

[Daniel Gagnon]

>
>
> And that makes them impossible to use for Clojure?  Not as nice, I'll
> admit- but welcome to the bleeding edge.
>
>
They don't automatically deal with CLASSPATH and all that kind of issues
either.

Clojure lacks clear instructions that you can follow to the letter to get
you started. Once you are started, it's easier to swap things.

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Re: Clojure's n00b attraction problem

[Daniel Gagnon]

>
>
> What editors do they use?
>
>
Komodo, TextMate, IDLE, Eric, Wing, etc.


> And is there a reason that the same editors can't be used for Clojure?
>
>

They don't have clojure language packs.

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Re: Clojure's n00b attraction problem

[Daniel Gagnon]

What we need is this (but for clojure): http://learnyouahaskell.com/

I believe that the success of ruby is due in great part to *Why's Poignant
Guide to Ruby* and *Learn You a Haskell* is doing the same for Haskell. It's
fun to read, it holds your hand in setting up everything you have to and it
makes you want to learn more.

We need a great "just follow the guide" guide to introduce clojure to
people.

Maybe we could start a collective project to make that happen?

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Re: Clojure's n00b attraction problem

[Daniel Gagnon]

>
>
> This is the question I had on the blog post- what is meant by a "newbie"?
> Specifically, what sort of newbie is Clojure wanting to attract?  One of the
> "complaints" the original poster had was that you had a choice of editors.
> Of the pool of potential Clojure users, how many of them are not already
> familiar with one (or more) of vi, emacs, or eclipse/other Java IDE?  If not
> 0, then it surely must be very small.  That you can adopt Clojure without
> having to learn a new editor is a huge plus in my book (if I have to use
> your development environment to learn your language, I'm highly unlikely to
> learn your language).
>
>
How many? Most of the ones who come from a Ruby/Python background where
those editors are not very popular.



> One of Clojure's biggest strengths, IMHO, is the ease of adoption in
> situations where a Java tool chain already exists.  A lot of the complaints
> he has stand in opposition to this.  For example, the plethora of different
> build tools that can be used.  Or that Clojure is just a library, and all
> you need to do is deploy a couple of extra jars to deploy Clojure code.
>
>
Most of the newbies who come to clojure do not come from the pool of Java
programmers, they come to clojure from a programming language that is
already more flexible than Java. Only 32% come from Java according to a
recent survey (State of Clojure 2010) that number would most likely be lower
if we did a better job a retaining people who lack java knowledge.

Groking both java and clojure at once is not a simple task.


> Given a choice between Clojure being adopted by newbies who are so new they
> don't even have a familiar development environment, or existing Java
> development environments, I'd vote for the second.
>
>
 Agreed. "Avoid success at all cost". Clojure should stay an academic
language. No wait, that's Haskell.

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Re: Clojure's n00b attraction problem

[Daniel Gagnon]

On Mon, Jun 28, 2010 at 2:26 PM, cageface  wrote:

> As I said in the HN thread, I think you're right that getting started
> with a productive clojure environment is harder than it has to be.
>
> However, as I also said in the thread, I think the *real* obstacles
> for a noobie are the concepts in the language itself. Clojure is very
> elegantly designed, but it builds on some very powerful and somewhat
> difficult concepts. Stuart's book is a big help here but I'm afraid
> that Clojure is simply over the heads of a lot of "noobs" anyway.
>
> So I wonder how much making the first few baby steps easier is really
> going to help the uptake of Clojure. I have to imagine that the kind
> of person that can't figure out  a CLASSPATH is going to have his head
> explode when he has to figure out how to restructure all his
> iterations in terms of loop/recur.
>
>
I had an easier time to pickup Haskell than clojure and I went with Haskell
first so I was already familiar with functional programming when I got to
clojure. I like clojure better but the first time I came to it, I couldn't
figure out how the part were fitting together, dropped and came back later
when I continued to hear good things about it on proggit.

And I don't think borrowing CL's smugness is doing anyone any good.

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Re: the joys of lisp

[Daniel Gagnon]

>
> So in order to make this work in Python the *entire* standard library
> had to be modified to support it? That's worse than I thought.
>
>
Only the objects that made sense with the use of with.


>
> The python approach is superior if you believe, as Guido apparently
> does, that the useful set of syntactic constructs is small and well-
> bounded. If you think, as most lispers do, that syntactic manipulation
> is the essence of expressive power then the work it takes to add *one*
> new keyword to a language like python seems farcical.
>
>
I didn't say it was better, I said it couldn't be replicated with a simple
macro.

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Re: the joys of lisp

[Daniel Gagnon]

On Sun, Jun 27, 2010 at 2:58 PM, cageface  wrote:

> When I read about new "features" in other languages that would be
> simple macros in Lisp I just have to smile:
> http://docs.python.org/dev/reference/compound_stmts.html#with
>
>
That feature would *not* be a simple macro. It isn't simply a call to .close
on whatever object, it's an arbitrary cleanup procedure on any object that
implements the feature. The whole standard library implements it and objects
know how to clean after themselves. So do most third objects like database
connexions and what not.

We can take care of 95% of cases with simply calling close and that's easily
macro-able but unless with implement cleanup procedures for all of the
mutable objects of the java library we don't have *that* feature.

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Re: Duplicate key bug in hash-maps

[Daniel Gagnon]

>
>
> Apparently, duplicate keys in sets are only disallowed in set
> literals. Arguably, that must be a mistake on the users part, but
> it sure seems to clash with the behavior of sets elsewhere.
>
>
Why would you ever want to write a duplicate in a set literal?

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Re: State of Clojure web development

[Daniel Gagnon]

I don't use Clojure for web development and I thought sharing why could be
useful too.

For web development, my favourite tool is
Django.
It comes as a fullstack framework which means I have everything I need out
of the box. Templates, caching, ORM, a kick-ass autogenerated admin section,
cross-domain request forgery protection etc. and the documentation is really
top notch.

I'd rather have Clojure than Python but all the goodness that Django
provides is such a time saver that I feel I'd lose too much time with
Clojure.

If I had a full-stack, well-documented clojure framework, I'd jump to that.

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Re: I am unclear on how I can call an Ifn stored in a map usefully

[Daniel Gagnon]

>
>user=>(def current* (merge (uhoh* :event)(why* :event)))
>#'user/current*
>
> here's my problem:
>
>user=> current*
>{:stuff "ELI", :date #user$fn__2...@4fa3551c>, :name "EOW"}
>
> I was hoping this kind of a call would yield:
>
> {:stuff "ELI", :date "Tue 22 Jun 2010 17:45:32 MDT", :name
>"EOW"}
>
> I need the date representing the time I assign the def (evaluated at
> call time) and I don't know which keys will have an Ifn or just a
> string etc.
>
> Is there existing falicilites to make this happen? An existing
> function call perhaps not obvious to me? Or do I need to write custom
> loops to cycle through and handle each item?
>
> Thanks,
> Tim
>
>
That would be completely un-idiomatic. The point of immutable structures is
that they don't mutate. You are thinking in javaesque object orientation
where you mix state and identity.

You might be interested in Rich's take on that question:
http://clojure.org/state

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Re: Enhanced Primitive Support

[Daniel Gagnon]

>
> Lets just make things easy for the
> average guy..,
>

If we base the decision on the average guy not writing high performance
numeric apps, then we should also base it on the fact that he does not need
more than a long in 99% of cases either as Rich points out. And longs are a
much simpler concept to grok.

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Re: Enhanced Primitive Support

[Daniel Gagnon]

>
> The problem is that it distinctly *not* easy to write fast numeric code in
> Clojure. It requires expert Clojure knowledge. On the other hand, the mental
> burden for someone who wants BigInts in the new system is very low - you'll
> get a trivial to track exception.
>
>

Also, when done, it doesn't look like clojure anymore.

+1 on the new behaviour.

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