On: Functional Programming in JavaScript is Garbage

[coolsunglasses]

>Clojure's efficient immutable data structures are based on a book

HAMTs aren't unique to Clojure.

unordered-containers in Haskell has them, as well as Scala, Rubinius, and C++. There's a concurrent and lock-free version too.

Haskell's efficient and immutable containers library is based on papers from 1993 and 1973. Persistent Search Trees have existed as a topic of research since at least 1986.

So no, JS isn't excused here.

[chc → coolsunglasses]

I didn't say anything was unique to Clojure. I used Clojure as an example because the OP did so.

And, like, for any topic, you can usually point to some earlier research and say "Hey, look, there was this one paper so it's an old thing." But Haskell 98 wasn't even in existence when JavaScript came about. These were not mainstream ideas, even to the small degree they're mainstream now. The point is that JavaScript has similar limitations to many languages that were traditionally seen as supporting the functional style well around that time, such as most of the mainstream Lisps and OCaml. The ideas the OP is faulting it for not adopting were not well-explored despite having some old papers about them. (And from looking at history, I suspect trying to add those to the rush-job that was JavaScript would have resulted in eldritch horrors the human mind cannot fathom, so it was probably an OK choice not to get all experimental.)

[coolsunglasses → chc]

Haskell itself was created starting in 1990. Haskell '98 is referring to the 1998 report which was a popular standard for Haskell. It's not the first standard for Haskell nor was it the last (2010).

Okasaki and Bagwell did a lot to expand and firm up knowledge on persistent data structures, but there have been persistent search trees (usable for hash-maps) for ages. Lists too.