I'm only a little ways through Joy of Clojure (my first Clojure book) but bear with me as I'm thinking aloud on what it means for me to "think in Clojure." I hope list members will forgive me if I get things wrong - and please correct my working concept(s) as well.
One of the things that stuck out for me that I heard somewhere (can't remember exactly) was that OOP is about framing questions in terms of "nouns" and FP is about framing questions in terms of "verbs." Partly for my own benefit (and the list's critique and refinement) I want to talk about this as it relates to an example. The first task I'm working on in Clojure is taking a text file which is sortof a template, and then removing/adding/changing certain lines/strings in it based on an xml kindof config file, in the end spitting out an improved text file. If I was in the OOP frame of mind, I would have a class to represent my text file, and a class to represent my xml file. There would possibly be a shared base class to let me share the common slurping (reading of lines) from the files. As verb-y as that is (I hope Clojure is polluting my thought process already!) the base class would probably be called "File" or something super noun-y. In any case, the classes, the files, these are all "nouns." But in the FP frame of mind, I just have data or information, and the focus is on the transformations that I do with the data. The transformations are things like zip-my-xml-into-a-struct-map or read-my-lines-into-a-seq and replace-text-values-with-xml-values. The focus is on the actions (verbs being action words), and the functions are essentially the "verbs." I feel like I'm starting to get the concept of thinking in a function-al way, although I have a lot of work to do yet on learning Clojure the language. HTH, Peter On Thu, Sep 2, 2010 at 10:02 PM, Wilson MacGyver <wmacgy...@gmail.com> wrote: > I highly recommend "Joy of Clojure". It's a good "2nd book on clojure". > It shows you the "why things are the way they are", and how to > do things the clojure way as much as possible. > > On Thu, Sep 2, 2010 at 9:29 PM, HB <hubaghd...@gmail.com> wrote: >> Hey, >> I finished reading "Programming Clojure" and "Practical Clojure" and >> I'm hooked :) >> Please count me in the Clojure club. >> But I failed how to think in Clojure. >> My main career is around Java web applications (Hibernate, Spring, >> Lucene) and Web services. >> Lets not talk about Java web frameworks neither Clojure ones, I want >> to talk in general. >> Usually we create some domain entities, map them with Hibernate/ >> iBatis. >> I don't know how a Clojure application would be build without objects. >> I think Scala really shines here, this OOP/FP is really powerful >> approach (please note I'm not saying Clojure isn't good, I don't seel >> flame war) >> How to think in Clojure? how to achieve this shift? >> > > > > -- > Omnem crede diem tibi diluxisse supremum. > > -- > 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 -- The king’s heart is like a stream of water directed by the Lord; He guides it wherever He pleases. -- 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
