Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Is Typed Clojure worth the trouble?

blog.juxt.pro

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 62 posts

Re: Is Typed Clojure worth the trouble?

#51

Post by JadeNB »

sebastianconcpt wrote: post #50
JadeNB wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> most of the time you do the right thing in case of nil I can't remember where, but I was just reading something yesterday to the effect that a solution that works most of the time is worse than a 'solution' that never works: at least you'll notice the latter quickly, whereas you might not notice the former until it's buried so deep in your code that you've forgotten the hidden assumptions it involves.

Well can't be taken seriously. Real life works most of the time. Only theoretical thought experiments could work all the time. Can you show me a clock that worked more than 10K years? They are still trying to invent one (and we're not having it yet)

I agree, and Skinney made a similar point yesterday (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9759571). However, I think that an excessively literal reading misses the spirit of the quote (as I (probably mis)remember it). I elaborated in my reply https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9760336 .

Incidentally, your question about the 10K-year clock (to which I think it is impossible to give an answer today even if one exists today, since I think clockmaking has not yet been practiced for 10K years!) reminds me of anecdote #3 in http://www.netfunny.com/rhf/jokes/91q3/oldanecd.html .

Re: Is Typed Clojure worth the trouble?

#52

Post by notduncansmith »

sebastianconcpt wrote: post #44
kyllo wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't pass a static method as an argument to another static method. You can't write a static method that returns a static method. You can't partially apply a static method. Static methods are not functions.

Yeah, it do not have closures

I think Kyllo was referring more to first-class/higher-order functions. I believe Java 8 added support for lambda expressions, but it's nowhere near the same thing.

Re: Is Typed Clojure worth the trouble?

#53

Post by jstuxx »

kyllo wrote: post #43
jstuxx wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Java has functions one word "static".

You can't pass a static method as an argument to another static method. You can't write a static method that returns a static method. You can't partially apply a static method. Static methods are not functions.

That's the lack of higher order functions and the lack of first class functions. Anyway I think higher order functions and method references have been added to Java 8 as well as Lambda functions.

Re: Is Typed Clojure worth the trouble?

#54

Post by chimprich »

erdeszt wrote: post #42
yogthos wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the thing though, there are lots of papers that support both sides of the argument out there. For example, take this http://macbeth.cs.ucdavis.edu/lang_study.pdf large scale study of GitHub projects. In the study, Clojure is right up there for correctness with hardcore statically typed languages like Haskell. There's plenty of software written in both typing disciplines in the wild. Yet, nobody managed to conc…

I agree with this comment of yours but the first one has a few overstatements and that prompted my reply. Also if you feel that strong types slow you down I suggest you try some gradually typed language where you can start out without types, do the exploring and add the types when you know what you want. I've tried this in TypeScript and it was a fairly good experience.

It wasn't my intention to overstate the benefits of dynamic typing, just to point out that static typing isn't just a free lunch. I think yogthos sums up the situation pretty well.

Re: Is Typed Clojure worth the trouble?

#55

Post by sebastianconcpt »

notduncansmith wrote: post #52
sebastianconcpt wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it do not have closures

I think Kyllo was referring more to first-class/higher-order functions. I believe Java 8 added support for lambda expressions, but it's nowhere near the same thing.

I think so too and agree about the power of being consistent with first class things (functions in this case)

Re: Is Typed Clojure worth the trouble?

#56

Post by boothead »

sebastianconcpt wrote: post #45
boothead wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's nonsense frankly. I've worked with an excellent team of Haskellers before I don't think we'd have been anywhere near as good without the type system. I'd agree that having an awesome team gives you a lot of other advantages, and actually FP is a huge opportunity to build that team for start ups. FP tends to attract the kind of people who make up a great team. It's for this reason that I think the conclusions o…

Thanks for the downvotes, I was referring to things beyond FP. The type system is a set of early restrictions (as opposing to late restrictions or runtime or late bound). But now you mention it, I'm curious about if you think the type checker allowed you and your team to reach the goals of the project faster or not.

Sometimes restrictions are useful...

Aside from that in Haskell the type system isn't usually a restriction. Experts in Haskell tend to use the type system to guide them towards a correct solution.

I'm not sure it possible to say that we couldn't have built something quicker in another language or stack. What I will say was that the underlying abstraction that we built our system on (streams of events) is very well suited to a Haskell implementation, and I can say with some certainty that building a solution that is as "correct" as the one we built would have been extremely challenging. The code also held together for longer than has been my experience in some other languages and communities.

Re: Is Typed Clojure worth the trouble?

#57

Post by yogthos »

erdeszt wrote: post #42
yogthos wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the thing though, there are lots of papers that support both sides of the argument out there. For example, take this http://macbeth.cs.ucdavis.edu/lang_study.pdf large scale study of GitHub projects. In the study, Clojure is right up there for correctness with hardcore statically typed languages like Haskell. There's plenty of software written in both typing disciplines in the wild. Yet, nobody managed to conc…

I agree with this comment of yours but the first one has a few overstatements and that prompted my reply. Also if you feel that strong types slow you down I suggest you try some gradually typed language where you can start out without types, do the exploring and add the types when you know what you want. I've tried this in TypeScript and it was a fairly good experience.

Clojure also takes this approach with core.typed as well https://frenchy64.github.io/2015/06/19/gradual-typing.html

I personally haven't found a place where this is necessary yet, but who knows what might happen in the future. :)

Re: Is Typed Clojure worth the trouble?

#58

Post by dllthomas »

sebastianconcpt wrote: post #45
boothead wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's nonsense frankly. I've worked with an excellent team of Haskellers before I don't think we'd have been anywhere near as good without the type system. I'd agree that having an awesome team gives you a lot of other advantages, and actually FP is a huge opportunity to build that team for start ups. FP tends to attract the kind of people who make up a great team. It's for this reason that I think the conclusions o…

Thanks for the downvotes, I was referring to things beyond FP. The type system is a set of early restrictions (as opposing to late restrictions or runtime or late bound). But now you mention it, I'm curious about if you think the type checker allowed you and your team to reach the goals of the project faster or not.

I had a system in C, with a goal of extremely low latency. This involved a small collection of threads, each serving a different role. Project goals would periodically change, and I would find myself needing to move some functionality from one thread to another. With some creativity, I was able to enlist the help of the type checker in assuring that a particular function ran only on a particular thread. This sped me up tremendously, as my tooling would point me to inconsistencies rather than having to reason them out myself.

Re: Is Typed Clojure worth the trouble?

#59

Post by [deleted] »

jstuxx wrote: post #39
dmead wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that is static typing FUD. if it takes you a few days or weeks to learn to use the type checker and it saves you from expensive runtime errors later, then whats the problem?

More like its FKF (Fear of the Known and Familiar). Most (if not all) programmers have experience with static typing and most of those experiences were not pleasant hence why a lot of people don't like static typing. People start to hate it even more when it gets shoved down their throats i.e. "You must absolutely must use static typing otherwise your software is unreliable and buggy". Static typing requires discipli…

[deleted]

Re: Is Typed Clojure worth the trouble?

#60

Post by dllthomas »

jstuxx wrote: post #39
dmead wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that is static typing FUD. if it takes you a few days or weeks to learn to use the type checker and it saves you from expensive runtime errors later, then whats the problem?

More like its FKF (Fear of the Known and Familiar). Most (if not all) programmers have experience with static typing and most of those experiences were not pleasant hence why a lot of people don't like static typing. People start to hate it even more when it gets shoved down their throats i.e. "You must absolutely must use static typing otherwise your software is unreliable and buggy". Static typing requires discipli…

There are too many things wrong with this comment for me to address any subset of them coherently...

I'll leave it at responding to the bit I do agree with, which is that many people have had poor experiences with poor checkers for poor type systems.

Post reply on HN