alt Hacker NewsCommon Lisp as well. I can’t explain why, but type errors are just not something I struggle with in Common Lisp! But it is in JS and Python for sure. Maybe someone knows why it feels different?
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packetlost • yesterday at 4:26 PM
I haven't done much with CL so I can only speculate, but I think stricter FP principles in general work to minimize the downsides of dynamic typing. CL, to my understanding, isn't the most "pure" when it comes to FP, but does a good job at giving the programmer a lot of power to constrain and explore systems.
I think it’s cause there’s less imperative code and side effects to track data transformations through.
Like any random JS/php app is probably a huge pile of loops and if statements. To track what happens to the data, you need to run the whole program in your head. “And now it adds that property to the object in the outer scope, and now that object gets sorted, now it hits the database… ok…”. Whereas in clojure most functions are either a single atomic transformation to a set of data, or batch of side effects. You still have to run it through your head, but you can do it more piece-by-piece instead of having to understand a 1,000 method with class states being auto loaded and mutated all over the place. Also you have a REPL to try stuff out as you go.
Dont get me wrong, I LOVE static types. Statically typed clojure would be the best fckin language ever. But there is definitely a wide gulf between a dynamic language like JS, and one like clojure!