Fundamentals vs Details
- 1 minOne of the goals of the apprenticeship at 8th Light, is to walk one through the programming languages landscape and equip that person with enough knowledge to handle most situations. For this reason, one is expected to walk through and learn three types of languages that we feel can cover a large area. A dynamic OO based language, a statically typed one and a functional one.
Clojure is usually the language of choice for the functional section.
Yesterday me and an esteemed colleague engaged in a discussion about whether a Lisp variant, like Clojure, should be the default choice. I personally see Clojure as a tool and vehicle towards understanding and thinking in functional ways. I argued that any other functional language would satisfy the same goal.
An argument was presented about ideas that exist within Lisp such as the idea of “code is data” as well as the argument that a Lisp has no “syntax”.
The problem I find with these arguments is that none of them provide a compelling enough reason for beginner to pick it up. Both are arguments that in order to be understood, one must have a significant amount of experience and practice, especially with other languages. Apart from the fact that I disagree with some of them, a beginner will find no benefit in them.
Macros, Monads, Actors, these are all details albeit important.
What’s more important, is to understand the functional approach that Clojure, Haskell, Erlang and any other language that falls under that paradigm takes. Trying to learn too many new things at the same time can be quite challenging and taxing for one’s mind. Beyond that, certain ideas that make each language unique, only appear to a user over time and only once the user has fundamentally understood the main ideas behind that paradigm.
Personal blog of Makis Otman