Clojure: Immutability at the Language Level

http://www.developer.com/java/article.php/3874551/article.htm

by Raphael_Amiard • 16 years ago

39 7 16 years ago

After I got past the introduction, I liked this article a lot better.

I like to focus on what something says, rather than on how it's written. Unfortunately, the introduction is so tangled and wordy, I found that hard to do.

Example: "In many cases, purists see the essence of immutability as a precondition for any given language to fall into the category of functional programming." As an editor, I might suggest "Purists would say functional programming requires immutability."

Example: "But we can extend the larger picture of immutability beyond the strict ecosystem of data structures alone and instead encompass any object that adheres to the notion of immutability." How about "But immutability applies to more than just data structures."

Happily, where it talks about code, the article is pretty straightforward.

fogus2• 16 years ago

Well, it made perfect sense to me! ;-) Seriously, I had a tendency to be a little ... verbose. The genius of the early access approach is that these types of things can be identified before print. Thank you.

dmlorenzetti2• 16 years ago

You're welcome. In fact the main reason I mentioned it was because it seemed like there might be time for feedback to make a difference.

dpritchett2• 16 years ago

The intro implies that this article is an excerpt from the MEAP edition of The Joy of Clojure. I don't recognize a lot of it from my 4-chapter MEAP copy. Is there a new push due out soon?

fogus2• 16 years ago

It's mostly from the next MEAP update -- available soon. (I wish I had a better estimate than that, but we tend to be the last to know about these things)

dpritchett2• 16 years ago

Thanks!

For what it's worth I've enjoyed the first four chapters well enough to recommend it to any other prospective buyers.

mark_l_watson• 16 years ago

Good article! I don't use Clojure much, but the language is fun to code in. I bought the MEAP, and I am looking forward to updates. BTW, I fortunately don't have to code in Java too much anymore, but when I do I have been favoring read-only objects.

Clojure: Immutability at the Language Level

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