Elia Scotto eliascotto

ClojureScript macros: kinda, sorta, not really.

ClojureScript does not have a standalone macro system. To write ClojureScript macros, one must write them in Clojure and then refer to them in ClojureScript code. This situation is workable, but at a minimum it forces one to keep ClojureScript code and the macros it invokes in separate files. I miss the locality of regular Clojure macros, so I wrote something called maptemplate that gives me back some of what I miss. The technique may be useful in other scenarios.

Problem

Suppose you're wrapping functionality in another namespace or package so that you can have your own namespace of identically named but otherwise decorated functions:

ClojureScript:

Reader Macros in Common Lisp

This post also appears on lisper.in.

Reader macros are perhaps not as famous as ordinary macros. While macros are a great way to create your own DSL, reader macros provide even greater flexibility by allowing you to create entirely new syntax on top of Lisp.

Paul Graham explains them very well in [On Lisp][] (Chapter 17, Read-Macros):

The three big moments in a Lisp expression's life are read-time, compile-time, and runtime. Functions are in control at runtime. Macros give us a chance to perform transformations on programs at compile-time. ...read-macros... do their work at read-time.

Clojure Destructuring Tutorial and Cheat Sheet

(Related blog post)

Simply put, destructuring in Clojure is a way extract values from a datastructure and bind them to symbols, without having to explicitly traverse the datstructure. It allows for elegant and concise Clojure code.

Vectors and Sequences

George Hotz - talking hour

Recommendation Martin Shkreli Finance Lesson
Book: White Noise by Don DeLillo
Nietzsche, Kirkegard, Kafka are accessible reading material
The Century of the Self
David Foster Wallace
- David Foster Wallace - The Problem with Irony

Post-Modernism is irony, cynicism, deprication, seen in Fight Club

My answer to: https://www.reddit.com/r/Clojure/comments/pcwypb/us_engineers_love_to_say_the_right_tool_for_the/ which asked to know when and at what is Clojure "the right tool for the job"?

My take is that in general, the right tool for the job actually doesn't matter that much when it comes to programming language.

There are only a few cases where the options of tools that can do a sufficiently good job at the task become limited.

That's why they are called: General-purpose programming languages, because they can be used generally for most use cases without issues.

Let's look at some of the dimensions that make a difference and what I think of Clojure for them:

	;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; Ant sim ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
	; Copyright (c) Rich Hickey. All rights reserved.
	; The use and distribution terms for this software are covered by the
	; Common Public License 1.0 (http://opensource.org/licenses/cpl.php)
	; which can be found in the file CPL.TXT at the root of this distribution.
	; By using this software in any fashion, you are agreeing to be bound by
	; the terms of this license.
	; You must not remove this notice, or any other, from this software.

	;dimensions of square world

	# From http://stackoverflow.com/a/11158224

	# Solution A - If the script importing the module is in a package
	from .. import mymodule

	# Solution B - If the script importing the module is not in a package
	import os,sys,inspect
	current_dir = os.path.dirname(os.path.abspath(inspect.getfile(inspect.currentframe())))
	parent_dir = os.path.dirname(current_dir)
	sys.path.insert(0, parent_dir)

	var Promise = require('bluebird');

	/**
	* Periodically poll a signal function until either it returns true or a timeout is reached.
	*
	* @param signal function that returns true when the polled operation is complete
	* @param interval time interval between polls in milliseconds
	* @param timeout period of time before giving up on polling
	* @returns true if the signal function returned true, false if the operation timed out
	*/

	;; Godel Escher Bach - G fractal from Chapter 5
	(set!
	(.-innerHTML js/klipse-container)
	"<canvas style='width:100%; height:100%'></canvas>")
	(def canvas (aget (js/document.getElementsByTagName "canvas") 0))

	(set! (.-height canvas) (.-innerHeight js/window))

	(def ctx (.getContext canvas "2d"))