The thing with dynamic languages is that the development style is basically println-driven.
It goes like this: because you can't keep anything longer than a 1-page script in your head and because you can't remember the APIs of other people and hence you can't trust anything you write, in order to keep some sanity, you have to execute every freaking line of code that you write in order to verify that what you wrote actually works — and the sooner you execute, the better, because if your program crashes, the triggered error can happen far away from where the mistake is actually made.
This happens for every dynamic language, not just Clojure. This is why the read–eval–print loop is so important.
However the development experience changes dramatically in a good static language (no, not talking of Java or Go), because you can write more than one line of code before feeling the need to verify it — when compiler type checks a piece of code, at the very least you can be sure that the APIs you used, or the shape of the data you're interacting with are correct.
Refactoring is also painless. Ever done refactoring of projects built on dynamic languages? It's a freaking nightmare and no, the tests don't help that much, the tests actually become part of the problem.
This is also why dynamic languages folks complaining about long compile times are missing the point — those long compile times are necessary to give you guarantees that in a dynamic language you don't get at all, changing the experience, because in turn you don't have to run your code that often.
Its unfair to club Clojure and imperative object oriented dynamic languages together. The same way its unfair to club Java and Haskell together.
You're right about the print-ln style. You do run your code everytime you touch a single line. That's what I like about it. But its a personal preference, like some people prefer to compose music on a sheet, others rather have their instrument in hand.
And you're forgetting the trade offs. With haskell, you wrestle the compiler, and every line you write has a compile error at first, until you get it right. This takes as much time if not more, at least for me, then it does running each of my lines of code in my REPL.
I guess I fall in that category where I kind of enjoy the beauty of both, though at the end of the day, I find myself having more fun coding when writing Clojure.
I've never suffered from a Clojure refactoring. You have to be a little more careful, but its never been that painful to me. Again, could be how I perceive "coding pain" is different from others.
I prefer being forced to keep my program simple by making complexity intolerable over encapsulating it. Your preference may differ.
I find I have to refactor my dynamically typed programs less frequently than my statically typed ones. Your mileage may vary.
No amount of type safety will prove my game is fun, or that my user can understand the UI. I want fast iteration times, since I can’t wait on the compiler to test a new enemy behavior or GUI layout.
No, but what it can ensure to some extent is that your game runs, and doesn't crash randomly. If the game crashes constantly, no one is going to play it no matter how fun it is.
Clojure is compiled, isn't it?
Also interesting is the other end of the spectrum: Forth. Instead of mutation, offers snapshots and restores of the “dictionary”. See this video: https://youtu.be/mvrE2ZGe-rs
Are you saying that you want to be able to make bindings that are refreshed on REPL reload? For example if I have a file that contains
x = 1
y = x + 1
x = 10
This page https://clojure.org/about/dynamic explains it well.
The difference basically is that the mindset is to work within a running environment, swaping things out as its running. Its closer to a Jupyter notebook, or an excel sheet in some ways, if that helps you visualize it.