Ah, OK. It'll be interesting to see how this turns out.

Andrew Oberstar

On Sat Nov 15 2014 at 9:40:45 AM Daniel Kersten <[email protected]> wrote:

> Feature expressions would allow for this by allowing you to define the
> function multiple times, once per platform. Something like this (cljx) code:
>
> #+clj (defn foo [] (println "Clojure implementation")
> #+cljs (defn foo [] (js/console.log "ClojureScript implementation")
>
> On 15 November 2014 14:59, Andrew Oberstar <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> I apologize if this is naïve and/or incomplete; I'm very new to Clojure.
>> Would a better solution be to use something closer to protocols and
>> multimethods, where functions could be "polymorphic" by platform rather
>> than polymorphic by arguments?
>>
>> This would make it open for users to add support for platforms the
>> library author didn't support. At a quick glance, it looks like a feature
>> expression wouldn't allow for this.
>>
>> Andrew Oberstar
>>
>>
>> On Sat, Nov 15, 2014, 6:56 AM Daniel Kersten <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>>> I didn't ask for feature expressions in the survey, but I've been
>>> wishing for a better way for writing cross-target code, especially
>>> libraries.
>>>
>>> I've never quite managed to bring myself to develop with cljx - I love
>>> it as a consumer of libraries, but I haven't quite managed to make it wo
>>> wellrk in my workflow for my own code, so haven't been using it.
>>> I've found it a bit too slow and clunky and don't quite know how it fits
>>> with other tools I use: eg, browser repl, figwheel, devcards.
>>> I also find it less than desirable to run yet another java process
>>> alongside my client nrepl, cljsbuild auto (or figwheel) and server clj
>>> application. Its already a heavier weight setup than I'd like.
>>>
>>> I imagine most of these concerns can be addressed in cljx itself, of
>>> course, but as it stands it's not ideal and improvements are needed
>>> -somewhere-. If it's part of the reader, though, then I don't need a
>>> separate stage. Plus any code invoking the reader would be target aware.
>>>
>>> On Sat, 15 Nov 2014 12:08 Julien Eluard <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hi Colin,
>>>>
>>>> CLJX definitively does the job but at the price of being very brittle
>>>> and having to juggle with paths and classpaths. Also this is a leaky hack
>>>> as you have to make all tooling aware of it (editor, nrepl, ..). It usually
>>>> sort of work up to the point it doesn't. CLJX does the magic by generating
>>>> files and I must be aware of it while I would expect this to disappear with
>>>> Feature Expressions.
>>>> I would very much like to see something like that standardized and
>>>> transparent.
>>>>
>>>> Some specific answers:
>>>> 3. No. This goes much beyond. On the browser you have access to much
>>>> more than one would expect being part of a standard librairies.
>>>> See [1] for an example.
>>>> Also it's not clear how macro could be handled this way.
>>>>
>>>> 4. Node support (and related scenario) is a real problem. It's not
>>>> clear to me how to handle it and if this should be addressed by Feature
>>>> Expressions. See [2] for a concrete example.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> [1] https://github.com/davidsantiago/hickory
>>>> [2] https://github.com/davidsantiago/hickory/issues/17
>>>>
>>>> Julien
>>>>
>>>> 2014-11-15 4:09 GMT-03:00 Max Kreminski <[email protected]>:
>>>>
>>>> On Friday, November 14, 2014 7:22:39 PM UTC-8, Colin Fleming wrote:
>>>>> > Hi all,
>>>>> >
>>>>> > There's a discussion going on right now on clojure-dev (
>>>>> https://groups.google.com/d/topic/clojure-dev/6pnIeXFRwnI/discussion)
>>>>> about the Feature Expressions functionality currently slated for Clojure
>>>>> 1.7. This was one of the most requested features in the recent state of
>>>>> clj/cljs survey, particularly by cljs users. However there seems to be a
>>>>> lot of confusion about exactly what the needs are here. I think everyone
>>>>> would be very interested in feedback, either here or on the clojure-dev
>>>>> thread if you have access, on why this is so important to cljs users.
>>>>> Specifically:
>>>>> > Is there something specific in the current proposal that is
>>>>> especially attractive to you, or is Feature Expressions more a proxy for
>>>>> "it should be easier to write cross-platform code"?Is there a strong
>>>>> argument for having this in the language, instead of in a tool like CLJX?
>>>>> Is this a fundamental failing of CLJX, or is the tooling perhaps just more
>>>>> awkward to use than it could be?
>>>>> > Could these needs be totally or mostly met by better cross platform
>>>>> libraries, like string and date handling?Would more features be useful 
>>>>> than
>>>>> simply "this is CLJS code", i.e. would this be helpful for Node support? 
>>>>> Is
>>>>> there no other way to get that support, i.e. through better libraries or
>>>>> macros?
>>>>> > I don't know the answers to any of these questions or have strong
>>>>> opinions about them since I don't use CLJS or CLJX, but I do write tooling
>>>>> that has to support them so I'd really like to understand this better.
>>>>> >
>>>>> > If any of you are interested in this and will be at the conj,
>>>>> there'll be an unsession about Feature Expressions there - please come and
>>>>> tell us what you think!
>>>>> > Cheers,
>>>>> > Colin
>>>>>
>>>>> I'm primarily a ClojureScript dev but I sometimes work with Clojure on
>>>>> the JVM as well. Here's my perspective.
>>>>>
>>>>> 1. I have no strong feelings about feature expressions in particular;
>>>>> I'm just excited to see the core team endorsing anything that will make
>>>>> cross-platform development simpler out of the box.
>>>>>
>>>>> 2. I have no major problems with CLJX (I suppose it's a bit of a hack,
>>>>> but it suffices for my purposes) except that of adoption. If I want to 
>>>>> make
>>>>> any of the Clojure core repos CLJS-compatible, I can't use CLJX to write
>>>>> shared platform-agnostic code – the core team doesn't allow it. If a
>>>>> particular JVM Clojure library's maintainer doesn't like CLJX for whatever
>>>>> reason, I can't use that library in my CLJS project without forking it and
>>>>> maintaining the fork. At the moment, Clojure and CLJS code are 
>>>>> incompatible
>>>>> by default, which feels like the opposite of how things "should be".
>>>>>
>>>>> 3. Better cross-platform libraries might get us halfway there but they
>>>>> won't completely obviate the need for CLJX, feature expressions, or
>>>>> something similar. When trying to write cross-platform exception handling
>>>>> code, for instance, I still regularly find myself needing to replace
>>>>> instances of "Exception" with "js/Error"; as long as these sorts of
>>>>> situations are still coming up I'll always want to have something like 
>>>>> CLJX
>>>>> or feature expressions in my toolbox.
>>>>>
>>>>> 4. I can't really speak to this point too much, as I've never really
>>>>> run into any problems trying to work with e.g. Node vs browser JS. In the
>>>>> long term it might make sense to divide the "Clojure platform" into a set
>>>>> of specific features (e.g. macros, reified namespaces, clojure.string, 
>>>>> etc)
>>>>> and allow users to test whether each of these features is "present" on any
>>>>> given implementation, but whether there exists an actual use-case for this
>>>>> is beyond me and it seems totally out of scope for the current discussion
>>>>> anyway.
>>>>>
>>>>> To get on my soapbox for a bit, I think the gap between Clojure and
>>>>> CLJS is gradually widening because the language as currently implemented
>>>>> makes it difficult to write and maintain cross-platform code. CLJX's
>>>>> feature set is all I really need, but right now every member of the
>>>>> community has to specifically "opt in" to writing cross-platform code by
>>>>> manually setting up CLJX for every project. Couple that with the fact that
>>>>> I specifically can't use CLJX when I'm contributing to the core libraries,
>>>>> and we wind up with a lot of duplicated effort on both sides of the
>>>>> Clojure/CLJS fence.
>>>>>
>>>>> The sooner we get feature expressions or something equivalent baked
>>>>> into core, the better. Only once the core team has blessed a particular
>>>>> solution will we see the current situation replaced by the "cross-platform
>>>>> by default" scenario I'd prefer.
>>>>>
>>>>> --
>>>>> Note that posts from new members are moderated - please be patient
>>>>> with your first post.
>>>>> ---
>>>>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
>>>>> Groups "ClojureScript" group.
>>>>> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send
>>>>> an email to [email protected].
>>>>> To post to this group, send email to [email protected].
>>>>> Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/clojurescript.
>>>>>
>>>>  --
>>>> Note that posts from new members are moderated - please be patient with
>>>> your first post.
>>>> ---
>>>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
>>>> Groups "ClojureScript" group.
>>>> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send
>>>> an email to [email protected].
>>>> To post to this group, send email to [email protected].
>>>> Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/clojurescript.
>>>>
>>>  --
>>> Note that posts from new members are moderated - please be patient with
>>> your first post.
>>> ---
>>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
>>> Groups "ClojureScript" group.
>>> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send
>>> an email to [email protected].
>>> To post to this group, send email to [email protected].
>>> Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/clojurescript.
>>>
>>  --
>> Note that posts from new members are moderated - please be patient with
>> your first post.
>> ---
>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
>> "ClojureScript" group.
>> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
>> email to [email protected].
>> To post to this group, send email to [email protected].
>> Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/clojurescript.
>>
>
>  --
> Note that posts from new members are moderated - please be patient with
> your first post.
> ---
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> "ClojureScript" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
> email to [email protected].
> To post to this group, send email to [email protected].
> Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/clojurescript.
>

-- 
Note that posts from new members are moderated - please be patient with your 
first post.
--- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"ClojureScript" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to [email protected].
To post to this group, send email to [email protected].
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/clojurescript.

Reply via email to