Rich, thanks for the extended explanation of the overlap between the old and new constructs; I found this explanation much clearer than what is currently on the wiki. Basically, the key for me was realizing that these new constructs are all you're likely to need as long as you are just programming "in Clojure" and not worrying about Java interop.
A related question I have is to better understand the overlap/relationship between multimethods and the new protocols. At first glance, they seem fairly orthogonal. If you have something that dispatches only on type, or corresponds to a Java interface, use a protocol, otherwise use multimethods. However, I notice that one thing protocols give you is the ability to batch function requirements and say, "these functions need to be implemented together". It seems to me like there is just as much value to being able to include multimethods as part of such a requirement of things to implement together. So would it make sense for multimethods to be included as part of protocols, or should there be some similar grouping system for multimethods? Regarding partial implementation, Rich and a couple others have suggested that the ability to merge together maps of implementations basically gives you partial implementation. But it seems to me that a lot of times, several interface functions will share some sort of local state, using closures. If I'm visualizing this correctly, these sorts of partial implementations couldn't possibly be mixed-in, because there would be no way to share that state. Off the top of my head, I don't yet have a concrete example of this -- has anyone encountered this yet in their experiments with protocols? --Mark -- 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
