That is certainly a philosophical question to which I cannot give any proof to my view. In my view, as long as human beings are still writing code, you cannot be truly efficient and effective without a language that can let you express and organize your ideas in a natural way (which itself is subject to debate). And as LISP looks unnatural to many people on the surface, it actually makes a lot of things more natural, hence I am very interest in it (I already did quite some coding in Emacs Lisp and have some limited experience with Common Lisp). For example, the "with-open", or a lot of other "with-xyz" macros, filters out the noises and make people focus on the matter at hand, which is natural to most people (you can argue it is also more efficient, but I consider them the same or have a very strong correlation). Further, the macro system can let you tailor the system to fit your own particular "natural" style. But it cannot let you tailor everything, so I am just hoping to gain as much as possible on the "natural" part and lose as little as possible on the "unnatural" part.
On May 20, 8:42 pm, Alex Baranosky <alexander.barano...@gmail.com> wrote: > I'd argue with you over whether that is the whole point of high-level > languages. I might say that high-level languages are there to make coding > more efficient and effective. > > > > > > > > On Sun, May 20, 2012 at 5:16 PM, Warren Lynn <wrn.l...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > I agree "familiar" is often mixed with "natural". But nevertheless > > that does not mean there is no such thing as "natural" thinking or > > programming pattern. In a broader sense, the whole point of high-level > > languages is to satisfy our need to express our ideas/logics in a more > > natural way, hence the modular design, interface and etc. The > > challenge of a language is how to be natural and powerful at the same > > time, as human being's natural thinking often is not enough to model > > the complexity of the world. > > > On May 20, 7:34 pm, David Nolen <dnolen.li...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > FWIW, the first thing I did when I encountered Clojure was built a Tiny > > > CLOS like system with inheritance. I've since come to the conclusion it > > was > > > a waste of time and Clojure offers an equally good set of tools. > > > > After examining a few powerful paradigms, OO, FP, LP, etc I'm not sure > > what > > > "natural" could possibly mean besides "familiar" which is a limited > > metric > > > in my opinion. > > > > David > > > > On Sun, May 20, 2012 at 6:17 PM, Warren Lynn <wrn.l...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > > Thanks for the suggestion. I understand part of the joy (and pain) of > > > > learning a new language is to change the way of thinking. So I > > > > probably need to take on something no-trivial but also not > > > > overwhelming to understand the issue or benefit better. > > > > > But eventually, a language cannot meet everybody's needs/tastes. In my > > > > view, there are certain patterns that are just "natural" to most > > > > people (not simply because they were taught like that in school), and > > > > a language will be more productive for those people to have those > > > > patterns (maybe with extra enhancements and enlightenment). I am sure > > > > with maps and multimethods you have actually a superset of any OO > > > > systems, and certain people find it much productive, but lacking > > > > direct support of certain natural patterns will lose many capable but > > > > non-genius programmers (which is nothing wrong if that is not part of > > > > the language's objectives). Part of my learning here is to find out if > > > > the language is right for me. > > > > > On May 20, 5:37 pm, Bill Caputo <logos...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > > > On May 20, 2012, at 4:23 PM, Warren Lynn wrote: > > > > > > >> defrecord, deftype, and defprotocol provide extensible low level > > > > > >> abstractions like the kind Clojure is built on. > > > > > > >> As a Clojure programmer you should only need them rarely. > > > > > > >> As a beginner you should never use them. > > > > > > Well, I don't want to be a beginner for too long, :-) > > > > > > I am not a clojure beginner (though far from feeling I know all > > there is > > > > to learn about it). I have been using clojure for almost a year; my > > team > > > > has rebuilt the central part of our system (which is relied on by just > > > > about every other team where I work) out of clojure and have had it in > > > > production for 6 months. > > > > > > I've yet to even learn *how* to use defrecord, deftype & defprotocol. > > > > > > IMO, If you're not doing a lot of java interop (i.e. where your > > clojure > > > > code is being consumed by java clients) you might never need them. > > > > > > As someone who came from, C++, C# & Ruby (and a little Java) - i.e. > > OO - > > > > to clojure & FP, I *strongly* recommend that you take a project > > (preferably > > > > one that you aren't hanging your livelihood on, but trust me it's a > > real > > > > rush) and try *really* hard to solve your design problems just with > > maps, > > > > vectors and the other core data structures (I first tried this in > > ruby, btw > > > > - a great learning experience and gave me a strong appreciation for the > > > > optimizations that clojure provides to make such code practical). > > > > > > IOW: pretend for a project that OO doesn't exist. When you're done, > > > > you'll have learned a lot, you'll still have what you know about OO, > > and > > > > when you're done you'll have lost nothing except your time and your > > > > perspective. You'll be doing yourself an enormous disservice if you > > simply > > > > try to map clojure onto your current way of working/thinking. > > > > > > bill > > > > > -- > > > > 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 > > > -- > > 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 -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Clojure" group. 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