> "Would that make having map and iterator functions always return cons less confusing?"
Yes it would/does. When I created my arc libraries, I built the normalization in. So I have a join function, which detects the type and applies the appropriate operation. I don't use conj, because I don't want to think about those things.
Interesting that you picked a string example, since that's exactly how Clojure already works. That is, using map on a string returns a list of chars. Often I need to:
(apply str (map #{upcase %} "abc"))
For whatever reason I don't mind this, I expect strings get converted to lists.
Here, seeing only the vectors I would get caught thinking it would produce (1 2 3 4 5 6) instead you would get (6 5 4 1 2 3).
Of course I went and created two join functions with my arc functions.
join : always adds to left side list or vector
join> : always adds to right side list or vector
(let [myVector (atom [1 2 3])]
(each x [4 5 6]
(reset! myVector (join> x @myVector)))
@myVector)
And I no longer have problems, I can see what's happening at the top level and it's consistent.
So in the end it's not such a big deal when your willing to normalize all the functions.
[note: I never tried out the code, it may not work, but you get the idea]
