On 17 Dec 2009, at 20:26, Sean Devlin wrote: > Konrad, > I am working on a different proposal on the dev list: > > http://groups.google.com/group/clojure-dev/browse_thread/thread/9a518c853bfbba8b# > > This is a more in depth version of these functions for maps. I'd love > to have you contribute to the discussion here.
I vaguely remember that discussion, but at the time I was too busy with other things to look at it. Now I did, but I don't think I have much to contribute. The way maps are used in the code examples of that thread just doesn't occur in the applications I have for Clojure. Just one general remark: I don't think it is a good idea to structure libraries around Clojure datatypes, as it is implied by a library name such as map-utils. Clojure's built-in data types can implement many different data abstractions, and I'd prefer to structure libraries around those abstractions rather than around the concrete representations. BTW, this is also the reason why I like multimethods and protocols, as very often an abstraction can have multiple practically useful implementations. Let's take maps as an example. A map can represent a table, or a small database. A map can also represent a function defined on a finite set of arguments. The operations used on maps are likely to be different for those two use-cases, and it is even quite possible that the same operation should have a different name for each application. So I'd rather see a library table-utils and another library discrete-function- utils. The latter should also provide implementations of its functions for vectors, which can represent functions defined on a finite range of integers. The discussion in the thread you cite turns mostly around using maps to represent tables. As I said, I don't have much use for this, so my only recommendation is to call it table-utils rather than map-utils and to envisage altenative representations, such as on-disk databases. 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 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
