Comment by blain_the_train | Hacker News Reader

Comment by blain_the_train | Hacker News Reader

blain_the_train

it's not clear to me, and from the studies i have seen, that Haskell leads to less unintended exceptions than Clojure.

haskell might certainly lead to less nil pointer expections, but that doesn't even mean the faulty logic is easier to resolve right?

what I'm saying is, no one pays to avoid nil pointer expections. if they did, i would simply right no code and call it a day.

the question is, does a language let you express your intent accurately. imo, this is what clojure gets right, because it helps me talk to the machine in the machines terms: datastructures.

clojure makes using well understood types easy by putting them into the snytax. it wires it into your brain.

my worry is, and hear this on every level, haskell is too open ended, people will choose to reinvent lists and sets and hashmaps making it harder and harder to understand how anything can compose together.

What do you mean by 'open ended', are you talking about literals for data structures or something deeper?

I'm asking a question about human psychology really. Maybe in a too cheeky way, because I feel some language enthusiasts, unintentionally, do the same by implying there programs are "safer" by being more constrained, without really justifying the claim.

I'm asking how haskell encourages people to use composable well understood abstractions and data structures?

Clojure does this by putting them into the syntax itself as primates E.g ([] () #{} {}) see? the list () contains a list of things, one of which itself is a list. This cuts away the translation barrier, i don't have to label the ocean as wet if your in it.

In this way all clojure developers are lead to think and talk to the machine the same way, this unifies how all Clojure programmers often choose to express intent.

It's at the heart of what Rich wanted for the language, making simple easy. Or as i see it know, making simple useful structures so easy to reach for, your discouraged, before you know better, to do something else. That's why i view clojure as more constrained then haskell, because I'm not sure haskell has that level of built in encouragement in it's design. I think the authors were interested in what could be, as where rich has taken a much narrow stance on how to deliver high level programs.

edit primates should be primitives. that's what i get for trying swiping on my phone and not triple checking. ;)

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