I think you're no longer teaching Clojure then. The values embedded in this design choice are important and erasing them does a disservice to learners.
I think by fighting this, you're actually making Clojure harder than it is. On Tuesday, July 17, 2018 at 9:49:33 AM UTC-5, Christian Seberino wrote: > > Alex > > Thanks for all the replies. It is clear there are 2 values in language > design...*simplicity* and *efficiency*. Sometimes they conflict > unfortunately. > Clojure sacrificed a tiny amount of simplicity for a huge gain in > efficiency with the design of conj and friends. > > Imagine someone wanted to have Clojure compete with Python and Scheme for > introductory programming classes. In that space > simplicity is everything. Maybe it would make sense there to teach using > "prepend" and "append" functions to keep things as simple as possible. > Then, later when they were more confident and ready, efficiency > considerations and conj could be explained. > > Would that give the best of both worlds? Everyone could have what they > want when they want it. > > cs > > > > > On Monday, July 16, 2018 at 4:30:51 PM UTC-5, Alex Miller wrote: >> >> >> >> On Monday, July 16, 2018 at 4:08:47 PM UTC-5, solussd wrote: >>> >>> Another way to think about it is lists and vectors are different and the >>> idiomatic way to add items to them is different. >>> >> >> I would say different data structures have different ways to >> *efficiently* add items to them, and conj is an operation to add items >> efficiently (meaning, sub-linear time). So when you see conj, you know it >> is always a "fast" operation. >> >> >>> A (singly-linked) list is usually prepended to (otherwise you have to >>> walk the entire list to find the end). A vector is usually added to at it’s >>> n+1 index, where n is the size of the vector. The conj function is >>> polymorphic. >>> >>> cons takes a seq and returns a seq. It only cares that it can get a seq >>> on whatever collection you give it and will always prepend to that seq. >>> >> >> Slight modification - I would say cons takes a *seqable* and returns a >> seq. For example, a vector is seqable, but not a seq. >> > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Clojure" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] Note that posts from new members are moderated - please be patient with your first post. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/clojure?hl=en --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Clojure" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
