access VS clerk

I like https://github.com/AccelerationNet/access

I agree you can make arguments, I like your explanation for the final form further downthread. For the second form, another choice could be (.x foo) or (. foo x). Or if you're trying to write something like System.out.println("x"), Clojure's .. shows it could be written as (.. System out (println "x")). Or, if you're using CL, you can use the access library (https://github.com/AccelerationNet/access) and write things like #Dfoo.bar.bast or (with-dot () (do-thing whatever.thing another.thing)).

In trying to further steelman a case where random Lisp syntax can be more difficult to read than, say, equivalent Python, two other areas come to mind. First is the inside-outness order of operations thing, it trips people up sometimes. Like the famous "REPL" (with a bad printer) is just (loop (print (eval (read)))), but in English we want to see that as LPER. Solutions include things like the arrow macro (Clojure did good work on showcasing it and other simple macros that can resolve this issue in many places) and if you write/pull one into CL REPL becomes (-> (read) (eval) (print) (loop)), how nice to read. But even the ancient let/let* forms allow you to express a more linear version of something, and you can avoid some instances of the problem with just general programming taste on expression complexity (an issue with all languages -- https://grugbrain.dev/#grug-on-expression-complexity ).

The second area is on functions that have multiple exit points. A lot of Lispers seem to just not like return-from, and will convert things into cond expressions or similar or just say no to early-exits. The solution here I think comes from both ends, the first is a broader cultural norm spreading in other languages against functions with multiple return statements and getting used to code written that way, the other is to just not get so upset about return-from and use it when it makes the code nicer to read.

thanks. Do you know how your cl-getx differs from access? https://github.com/AccelerationNet/access It is a universal accessor with the option of nested look ups.

ps: related: how to access an element in all the lisp sequences, generically? I like access for that: https://github.com/AccelerationNet/access (and generic-cl

Something I really like in the Clojure data science stack that isn't mentioned is Clerk* — an interesting take on notebooks. I think it's a good gateway into Clojure for those coming from a Python or R background.

*https://clerk.vision/

Clojure's lazy sequences by default are wonderful ergonomically, but it provides many ways to use strict evaluation if you want to. They aren't really a hassle either. I've been doing Clojure for the last few years and have a few grievances, but overall it's the most coherent, well thought out language I've used and I can't recommend it enough.

There is the issue of startup time with the JVM, but you can also do AOT compilation now so that really isn't a problem. Here are some other cool projects to look at if you're interested:

Malli: https://github.com/metosin/malli

Babashka: https://github.com/babashka/babashka

Clerk: https://github.com/nextjournal/clerk

I'm really enjoying using Clojure with Clerk: https://github.com/nextjournal/clerk

It's a bit like a Jupyter notebook, but you get to use your own editor, you still have a normal Clojure REPL, it's stored in git like "normal" code, etc.

Hey all, I'm new to Clojure and would appreciate your help with a few questions I had getting started. I'm using Leiningen to setup my projects and manage my packages as recommended in Brave & True. So far I've been able to add any dependencies I've needed without much issue, Neanderthal, tech.v3.dataset, etc. I'm interested in data science, and was hoping to set up a notebook environment to be able to quickly produce data visualizations on the fly since I'm used to working with Jupyter. I came across Clerk, but I'm having some trouble adding it to my project. Here's what I tried:

Clojure also has Clerk, which is like Jupyter, but more befitting Clojure's overall philosophy: https://clerk.vision/

If I were working long enough with gnarly enough equations I'd look into using Clerk to visualize the equations with MathJax or similar, probably following Sam Ritchie's footsteps with SICMUtils. To me this is the true readability answer: lisp notation for precise implementations, compiling to a rich & familiar visual representation.