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Comment by waffletower | Hacker News Reader

Could I politely suggest more Clojure-like naming? `deframaop -> defop`. You can always `(require 'com.rpl.rama :as rama)` and invoke with `(rama/defop ...)` for the desired level of clarity and improved readability.

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I named it like this so there would be consistency between deframaop and deframafn. Shortening deframafn like you suggest would be "deffn" or "deffunction", which would be very confusing. And I'd rather have deframaop + deframafn than defop + deframafn.

Why not rama/defop and rama/defn?

That would make it so you can't do "use" on com.rpl.rama. Since Rama is a full language, doing a "use" on the namespace is generally preferred as otherwise you would have to write "rama/" everywhere, which is irritating.

I also don't like overloading "defn" with something that's completely different. Also, a deframafn is more than a Clojure defn since it can emit to other output streams.

Why is it called Rama? (there may be an FAQ, but I couldn't find it)

It's named after the Arthur C. Clarke book.

But do things in Rama the language come in threes?

Yes. The second Rama language will have a co-author and will lose the purity of the first language by adding many keywords each with a lot of emotional backstory.

Probably that future co-author will write all of it w/o any attempt to preserve the aesthetic of the original. Probably that future co-author should not just not write anything.

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