> I made a half-hearted attempt to learn Haskell
Try Clojure(script) - everything that felt confusing in Haskell becomes crystal clear, I promise.
> Consider a histogram function.
You can absolutely do this efficiently with immutable structures in Clojure, something like
(reduce (fn [acc x]
(update acc x (fn [v] (inc (or v 0)))))
{}
coll)
This is O(n) and uses immutable maps. The key insight: immutability in Clojure doesn't mean inefficiency. Each `update` returns a new map, but:
1. Persistent data structures share structure under the hood - they don't copy everything
2. The algorithmic complexity is the same as mutable approaches
3. You get thread-safety and easier reasoning for a bonus
In JS/TS, you'd need a mutable object - JS makes mutability efficient, so immutability feels awkward.
But Clojure's immutable structures are designed for this shit - they're not slow copies, they're efficient data structures optimized for functional programming.
Try Clojure(script) - everything that felt confusing in Haskell becomes crystal clear, I promise.
> Consider a histogram function.
You can absolutely do this efficiently with immutable structures in Clojure, something like
This is O(n) and uses immutable maps. The key insight: immutability in Clojure doesn't mean inefficiency. Each `update` returns a new map, but:1. Persistent data structures share structure under the hood - they don't copy everything
2. The algorithmic complexity is the same as mutable approaches
3. You get thread-safety and easier reasoning for a bonus
In JS/TS, you'd need a mutable object - JS makes mutability efficient, so immutability feels awkward.
But Clojure's immutable structures are designed for this shit - they're not slow copies, they're efficient data structures optimized for functional programming.