Reading that output is beyond a headache. It should be against the law! But more importantly, when writing code/troubleshooting you can't copy the evaluated output make a modification and then call the function again. I know you can bind it and apply functions to modify it, but often that's a real hassle compared to copy/paste.
Clojure has DOZEN's of helper functions (and important traversal functions) that don't exist in Arc. Yeah I could write them, but I still have to. I was highlighting the ease with 'separate', but here's even 'deep-merge'....
(defn deep-merge
"Recursively merges maps. If keys are not maps, the last value wins."
[& vals]
(if (every? map? vals)
(apply merge-with deep-merge vals)
(last vals)))
> (deep-merge players {:joe {:weapon "LongBow"} :jane {:weapon "Lance"}})
It's not even these sample cases that expose the issues. It's about working with REAL data. I have many files containing hash-maps that are 15 levels deep. If I were to attempt pretty much anything, but the most simple cases, in Arc I would hit problem after problem after problem. Which I did. So fine... really I should use a DB, right? ok let me just grab that DB library in Arc....
-- Nil values --
I'd even be fine with any falsey values like boolean false. But Arc will not even store an #f value. To suggest I can't pass in REAL data with falsey values is really limiting. I can't pass in an options table argument. For every operation I would have to add more data or nuanced data or nuanced operations to support "this value was set, but it's set to 'NO' I don't want that option.".