+1 for easily controlling the surface area of an API and explanatory
defs over inline/expanded literals.
Sent from my iPad
On 18 Sep 2011, at 10:14, Rob Lally <rob.la...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Thanks for the reference Mark, much appreciated.
>
> I add the private meta-data by hand, but (defn- foo 2) is so much more
> succinct than (def ^:private foo 2) - where ^:private is almost half the
> declaration. I also find the placement of the meta-data tag to be intrusive
> and disruptive when reading... but that's just a personal peccadillo.
>
> I find your comments that you don't feel as much need to mark defs as private
> as often as defns really interesting, because it is quite different to my own
> practice. I tend to look at ^:private primarily as a way to inform users of a
> namespace that this def is something they can safely ignore because it is an
> implementation detail; you only need to pay attention to this if you're going
> to modify the code.
>
> I've spent 5 mins looking at random source files from a few clojure projects
> and I seem to use more defs than most people. I tend to pull out a fairly
> high percentage of literals into expanatory defs, whereas the small sample of
> files that I trolled through seemed to have a different feel for the tipping
> point when a def is appropriate.
>
> I am surprised at other comments in this chain where people would rather see
> the removal of def- than the addition of additional variants of def
> derivatives. I'm not arguing that I'm right, or that things should change,
> but personally I feel that controlling the exposed surface area of an API is
> crucial to comprehensibility and maintainability, and that making
> minimisation of surface area as trivial as possible will benefit us all.
>
> Thanks to everyone for taking the time to write down their thoughts,
>
>
> R.
>
>
> On 17 Sep 2011, at 16:37, Mark Rathwell wrote:
>
>> A previous discussion on the topic can be found here [1]. You can
>> easily add the private metadata yourself:
>>
>> Clojure 1.2: (def ^{:private true} size 25)
>> Clojure 1.3: (def ^:private size 25)
>>
>> I think probably the reason against it is that generally there is not
>> as much reason to use a constant, for example, outside of its
>> namespace as there is with functions, and therefore more need for
>> marking functions meant only for internal use as such (but that is
>> just guessing at other peoples' thought processes).
>>
>> [1]
>> http://groups.google.com/group/clojure/browse_thread/thread/80d873ef625221ac/243a0ad490150d3e?lnk=gst&q=def-#243a0ad490150d3e
>>
>>
>> On Sat, Sep 17, 2011 at 10:54 AM, Rob Lally <rob.la...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Hi all,
>>>
>>> Whilst trying to minimise the visible surface areas of namespaces, I've
>>> often felt the need for a def- function/macro that marks a def'ed var with
>>> :private metadata. An analog of defn-, if you will.
>>>
>>> Is there a reason that I shouldn't do this or a reason that it doesn't seem
>>> to be a member of the core lib?
>>>
>>> In the spirit of Hunt & Thomas' "Select isn't broken", when I encounter
>>> something this trivial, useful and absent I tend to conclude that I'm the
>>> one who's got things wrong.
>>>
>>>
>>> Thanks in advance,
>>>
>>>
>>> Rob.
>>>
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