Re:Why Clojure? (2010)
by junke on Friday December 30, 2016 @10:01AM
(#13284653)
Generic functions: functional yet dynamically dispatched.
[ Parent
| on HN ]
Generics aren't dynamically dispatched. Java has type erasure and C# emits variants for every instance.
No, I was talking about (Common) Lisp's generic functions (http://clhs.lisp.se/Body/m_defgen.htm). I realize I did not give enough context. Define a generic function:
(defgeneric garnish (what with-what))
Specialize it on one or multiple arguments: (defmethod garnish ((c cocktail) (f fruit)) ...)
(defmethod garnish ((s sandwich) (h ham)) ...)
...
But you can use it like a function: (let ((currified (rcurry #'garnish :curry)))
(map 'list currified items))Ah my bad! :)
These look very much like Clojure's protocols and multi-methods.
Yes, more like multi-methods, except for standard qualifiers (:around, :before, ...) and user-defined ones. OTOH, Clojure allows you to define a custom dispatch function.
Ah yes, Clojure has no first-class support for aspects. Its easy enough to monkey patch definitions for the rare case when its needed.
Most of the time however I try to avoid aspects as they introduce hidden behaviour in existing functions, which can be hard to reason about at scale, especially with more than a few developers.
I use them all the time. It's a great way to separate responsibilities.
I prefer function composition for that when possible :)
Aspects I feel are more useful when you want to modify the behaviour of existing code you don't own.
Maybe if I had easy access to them I'd find more use cases :)