On Aug 26, 5:29 am, Christian Vest Hansen <karmazi...@gmail.com>
wrote:
> Another Scala downer: "Scala is very powerful, some developers might
> shoot themselves into the foot" - I don't see how this applies more to
> Scala than Clojure. If we want to talk about foot-shooting, we could
> talk about macros. There are some common mistakes that people with
> weak macro-fu do.
Yes, we could talk about macros. The most common mistake that people
make with macros (accidental symbol capture) is prevented by clojure
fully qualifying names inside of syntax quote and preventing you from
let 'ing a fully qualified name; a simple built-in syntax for auto-
gensyms makes this easy to work with. IMHO, this is the best of both
worlds between Scheme and Common Lisp macros.
I think these language vs language discussions are mostly useful for
finding out what the writer _doesn't_ know about the languages in
question, myself included.
For instance, after having read odersky's Scala book. . . if you like
static typing and are looking for a new language, I don't see why you
would choose Scala over Haskell unless you have a strong investment in
java or really like the Lift web framework. Unrestricted use of vars,
for instance, seems like a step backwards from the kind of guarantees
a purely functional language gives you.
On the other hand, if you like dynamic typing and lisp, Clojure has
some distinct advantages over both Scheme and Common Lisp, eg macro
example noted above.
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