After moving from Scala to Clojure, I miss the types. Lately I’ve been playing with Prismatic Schema, a sort of optional typing mechanism for Clojure. It has some surprising benefits, even over Scala’s typing sometimes. I plan some posts about interesting ones of those, but first a more ordinary use of types: locating errors.
Today I got an error in a test, and struggled to figure it out. It looked like this:[1]
expected: (= [expected-conversion] result)
actual: (not (= [{:click {:who {:uuid “aeiou”}, :when #}, :outcome {:who {:uuid “aeiou”}, :when #, :what “bought 3 things”}}] ([{:click {:who {:uuid “aeiou”}, :when #}, :outcome {:who {:uuid “aeiou”}, :when #, :what “bought 3 things”}}])))
Hideous, right? It’s super hard to see what’s different between the expected and actual there. (The colors help, but the terminal doesn’t give me those.)
It’s hard to find the difference because the difference isn’t content: it’s type. I expected a vector of a map, and got a list of a vector of a map. Joy.
I went back and added a few schemas to my functions, and the error changed to
actual: clojure.lang.ExceptionInfo: Output of calculate-conversions-since does not match schema: [(not (map? a-clojure.lang.PersistentVector))]
This says my function output was a vector of a vector instead of a map. (This is one of Schema’s more readable error messages.)
Turns out (concat (something that returns a vector)) doesn’t do much; I needed to (apply concat to-the-vector).[2]
Clojure lets me keep the types in my head for as long as I want. Schema lets me write them down when they start to get out of hand, and uses them to narrow down where an error is. Even after I spotted the extra layer of sequence in my output, it could have been in a few places. Adding schemas pointed me directly to the function that wasn’t doing what I expected.
The real point of types is that they clarify my thinking and document it at the same time. They are a skeleton for my program. I like Clojure+Schema because it lets me start with a flexible pile of clay, and add bones as they’re needed.
—–
[1] It would be less ugly if humane-test-output were activated, but I’m having technical difficulties with that at the moment.
[2] here’s the commit with the schemas and the fix.
I have to alternate between Scala and JavaScript, often on the same day, so I get a constant reminder of the utility of types. The thing I like best about types is that you develop a \”type-driven style,\” in which you find that — if the types compile — the program usually runs correctly. This saves a lot of time in the long run. I can spin out both Scala and JS quickly, but I rarely need to revisit the Scala once the initial code-test cycle is complete. And if I do need to go back, the type-based code is, as you point out, always more self-documenting.
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Can you give please an example?
It never occurred to me to think of using Schema like that. Been considering typed clojure, but maybe Schema is a good starting point. Thanks for the tip.