On Fri, Jan 15, 2010 at 8:22 PM, Julian <juliangam...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Matt Raible - Spring Expert and Java consultant posted the following
> entry to Twitter:
> "Why is Clojure better than Scala or Groovy?"

If I had to pick just one specific feature (which may be a bad
way to going about answering this, but anyway...) I would say
"macros"

Clojure has full-on straight-up Lisp-style code-rewriting macros,
and this changes the game.  Macros have a unique combination of
properties for a language feature: dramatically powerful, very
well understood (lots of material written about them), and yet
still relatively rare among popular new languages.

Many dynamic languages have meta-programming features that can be
used to fill some of the gaps left by lack of macros, so I wasn't
convinced of the power and practicality of Lisp-style macros
until I read Paul Grahams "On Lisp".  I highly recommend it.
Even though it talks mostly about Common Lisp and therefore
Common Lisp macros, the macro discussions are very transferable
to Clojure.  http://www.bookshelf.jp/texi/onlisp/onlisp.html

There are other reasons to like Clojure, but that's perhaps the
simplest one to name.

--Chouser
http://joyofclojure.com/
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