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by gtrak 4739 days ago
Yes, you're right. Tradeoffs was more of a theme than a commitment to being comprehensive. I guess I meant to portray design tradeoffs and their implications, and sort of what perceptions I have about them. It wasn't meant to speculate about what could have happened if different choices were made, or where I feel I'm missing out, or even to be super-objective. The main message was that the interaction of the design tradeoffs guides our subjective aesthetics, and those subjective inclinations result in our programs. Plus, I just wanted to compress the case for clojure for different people, in terms of clojure's design tradeoffs and their implications.
2 comments
plinkplonk 4739 days ago
Sure. There is nothing wrong with writing an article " to compress the case for clojure for different people". We need those too.

When I read the title here on HN, I anticipated a balanced and comprehensive discussion on the design tradeoffs and was (mildly) disappointed to see that the article seemed to have a different focus (making a case for why Clojure is a language worth investing in, as far as I can make out).

I think Clojure is a brilliant language, but don't have enough experience with it to write about tradeoffs, and would really like to see a good discussion.

As I said in my original comment, it is a decent blog entry. My criticism is only about the (imo) mismatch between title and content.

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gtrak 4739 days ago
FWIW, I agree, I would love to see an expert talk about real tradeoffs, both abstractly and in regards to clojure. I'm just kinda piecing it together from what I think Rich was thinking, what I've picked up from JoC, blogs, talks, and experience.
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brudgers 4739 days ago
Don't beat yourself up over it too much. The structure of narrative form is something Clojure inherits from the Lisp tradition.

All essays about Clojure must either be a narrative in which "a man goes on a journey" or one in which "a stranger comes to town." [1] Yours, being the first type is just an old-fashioned love song to Lisp. [2] The other narrative form produces rants about s-expression syntax - though now that we have Python, praise of the semicolon is no longer a given.[3]

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1213770

[2] e.g. RPG's www.dreamsongs.com

[3] Such essays, lacking condescension, may be said to fail to comprehend the essence of Lisp.

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