Re: Road to Clojure Survey

Rich Hickey wrote:
On Feb 21, 1:16 pm, du...@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
On Feb 21, 6:43 am, Rich Hickey <richhic...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Feb 21, 6:57 am, Pascal Costanza <p...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Helmut Eller wrote:
* Vend [2009-02-20 22:26+0100] writes:
FSet is a library, not a language.
If I understand correctly, native immutable collections are just one
feature of Clojure, and it integrates well with other features
(polymorphic collection manipulation and concurrency control).
I'm confused by this whole discussion.
Aren't Clojure's collection classes just a library and the Clojure
compiler/language treats them just like any other Java class? Is there
a reason why those classes could not be used in normal Java programs?
They can be used in Java, but you have to adapt your programming style.
Existing Java code will not just automagically work with them in the
general case.
This is FUD - please stop spreading it.
Pascal is not likely to wave his own flag, but I don't think you
realize whom you are talking to. Pascal was a Java programmer long
before he switched to Common Lisp, and his first writings on Common
Lisp (http://p-cos.net/lisp/guide.html) provide some of his
background. However, even if you look up his credentials and are not
impressed, at least realize what you yourself are doing; you are
posting in a Lisp newsgroup arguing with someone who has switched his
major emphasis from Java to Lisp, and so cries of FUD are going to
fall on deaf ears and numb them to other things you have to say.

I do know Pascal. We've met several times and had some great
discussions. I respect both him and his work. I know Pascal's opinions
are well regarded here, all the more reason for them to be accurate. I
too came to Lisp from C++/Java/C#, and greatly value the areas in
which it is superior. But his statement above is simply wrong. It is
not a matter of qualifications or opinion. If you have existing Java
code that takes a collection and does not mutate it you can pass a
Clojure collection and it will work without change or adaptation, i.e.
"automagically".

Two statements have been made, a qualified and an unqualified one. The unqualified one was "Clojure's collections work seamlessly with Java code" and the qualified one was "Clojure's collections work seamlessly with Java code that doesn't mutate them." The first statement is wrong, the second statement is correct.

There is a large body of Java code for which this is
true, and people are leveraging that capability every day.

This may be true, but it doesn't mean that you can afford not to check whether some arbitrary Java code is compatible with Clojure collections.

Clojure has been out for over a year and I have never come here to
evangelize it. Now it is being discussed by others, and some
inaccurate things have been said. I'm just trying to keep the
discussion accurate, and have no aspirations of convincing anyone here
of anything.

I agree that the discussion should be accurate.


Pascal

--
ELS'09: http://www.european-lisp-symposium.org/
My website: http://p-cos.net
Common Lisp Document Repository: http://cdr.eurolisp.org
Closer to MOP & ContextL: http://common-lisp.net/project/closer/
.

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