On Mar 22, 2009, at 21:26, Joshua Fox wrote: > I dove into Lisp and Scheme several times in the past, but only > with Clojure did Lisp really "catch"? > > 1. Clojure abandons the 1950's cruft, with all-caps and > abbreviations like SETQ and CDR. However, Scheme does this too, > without achieving the ease of Clojure.
Scheme still has car and cdr. > 2. Clojure is typically illustrated with simple, practical > examples. Other Lisps are often introduced as tools for theory. Not > that there's anything wrong with that, like they said on Seinfeld. > On the other hand, Clojure's examples are often, for better or > worse, somewhat more sophisticated than the typical examples used > for teaching other languages. I'd say this is a hint at an important difference: the goal of the language design. Clojure is clearly made for real programming tasks, whereas Scheme was designed as a minimalistic language for research purposes. Being made for the real world, Clojure has features such as versatile and efficient built-in data stuctures, in particular maps, vectors, and sets. I wouldn't want to have to program without them. > 5. Even though pure-functional is not what most programmers are > used to, once you learn it, it makes everything else easier; in > contrast to non-pure-functional Lisp dialects Clojure isn't pure either, but it is much oriented towards a purely functional style. Again I think the most important aspect is the support Clojure has for making a functional practical, and not merely possible. Konrad. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ 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 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 -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
