On Thu, Aug 27, 2009 at 8:43 AM, Stuart Halloway <stuart.hallo...@gmail.com>wrote:
> > As the author of the book, you can bet I have an opinion on the > quality of the docs. :-) > > (1) I think the documentation for Clojure (website, Mark Volkmann's > long article [1], blog posts, the book [2]) is *insanely* good, given > how young the language is. But... > > (2) If you are coming from a mainstream business software environment, > there are a ton of new ideas in Clojure. There's more to learn, so of > course it is going be harder, and take longer. You won't get there > just by reading one book, even if you work through all the code > examples. I *love* that Rich's recommended reading list [3] has not 2, > or 4, but 36 books!! Clojure stands in opposition to the "in 21 days > for dummies" [4] school of thought. > > (3) Scala's just as hard to learn, because it too is full of ideas > that are new to many developers. I would love to see the 36-book list > for learning Scala, and I bet there would be significant overlap. > > (4) I think the Clojure docstrings are ok, but could be improved by > usage examples. Rich, are you interested in patches that simply add > examples to docstrings? > > In short: if you are the median developer, both Clojure and Scala are > huge improvements over the language you are using right now. But you > won't be effective in either one of them tomorrow: the learning curve > is not 1, but 5-10 books. > > So let's raise the bar. In the world I want to live in, programmers > above the novice level would understand the ideas in both Clojure and > Scala. Learn both. :-) > > Cheers, > Stu > > [1] http://java.ociweb.com/mark/clojure/article.html > [2] http://www.pragprog.com/titles/shcloj/programming-clojure > [3] http://tinyurl.com/clojure-bookshelf > [4] http://norvig.com/21-days.html > awesome post. Inspiring. > > > > > > I think there are a lot of people who need to choose between Clojure > > and Scala to study as a "new" language. I must say that both are bad: > > * Clojure doc is hard to understand. > > * Scala grammar is complicated. > > > > I prefer Clojure. I think Clojure feature at this time is OK, thus the > > decisive point to draw people to Clojure is doc. I wonder if the doc > > at this time is obvious for LISP people, but comming from C/C++, Java, > > Ruby, and Erlang (Erlang doc is bad, but it is paradise compared to > > that of Clojure :D) and even after reading the Clojure book, I must > > say that I can't understand 99% of the doc of both clojure and > > clojure- > > contrib. > > > > For example, what does the following mean? > > ------------------------- > > (-> x form) > > (-> x form & more) > > Macro > > Threads the expr through the forms. Inserts x as the second item in > > the first form, making a list of it if it is not a list already. If > > there are more forms, inserts the first form as the second item in > > second form, etc. > > ------------------------- > > > > My wish: There are easy-to-understand examples in API doc. > > > > Rails is easy to use largely because there are examples in doc of > > every API function. > > > > > > On Aug 26, 12:37 pm, Alan Busby <thebu...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 5:43 AM, npowell <nathan.pow...@gmail.com> > >> wrote: > >> > >>> I mean, I didn't think the article was terribly in depth, but a > >>> real, > >>> evenhanded comparison would be enlightening. > >> > >> Reducing it further, I'd be interested just to hear more about the > >> contrast > >> of static typing versus macros. Which is more beneficial for > >> different > >> situations and why? > > > > > > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Clojure" group. To post to this group, send email to clojure@googlegroups.com Note that posts from new members are moderated - please be patient with your first post. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/clojure?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
