I don't see anything profound here, except perhaps that the language will gladly accept the user's blatant type error and just explode at runtime. For the most part this article is fetishising over basic syntax.
Surely the compelling parts of Clojure go somewhat deeper than basic syntax. And if this is another tired discussion about legibility of syntax between languages, I have to wonder why people are still so fascinated by this?
Between the following two representations of the same function…
(defn f [x] (+ (* 3 x) 1))
…and…
f x = 3 * x + 1
…I see very little difference in legibility. Sure, one is visually noisier (and incidentally, the noisier,
less clean(!!!) notation is Robert C. Martin's favourite) but if you can afford to navel-gaze this much on syntax I'd question why you don't have anything more important to do. Of course I recognise that I must also not have much better to do since I read the article and I'm now commenting on it.
It's just weird to me that one would fetishise syntax, and then describe a language sporting a less visually-noisy syntax as "The Dark Path".
Edit: Apparently I need to state for the record that I spent a few years writing Clojure professionally. I'm not unfamiliar — I just haven't drowned in kool-aid.
Surely the compelling parts of Clojure go somewhat deeper than basic syntax. And if this is another tired discussion about legibility of syntax between languages, I have to wonder why people are still so fascinated by this?
Between the following two representations of the same function…
…and… …I see very little difference in legibility. Sure, one is visually noisier (and incidentally, the noisier, less clean(!!!) notation is Robert C. Martin's favourite) but if you can afford to navel-gaze this much on syntax I'd question why you don't have anything more important to do. Of course I recognise that I must also not have much better to do since I read the article and I'm now commenting on it.It's just weird to me that one would fetishise syntax, and then describe a language sporting a less visually-noisy syntax as "The Dark Path".
Edit: Apparently I need to state for the record that I spent a few years writing Clojure professionally. I'm not unfamiliar — I just haven't drowned in kool-aid.