Uh, no. Your solution just uses a bunch of standard library functions (at least, I hope they're not syntactic forms… and why a function as specific as "frequencies" not in some namespace boggles my mind). I could write that in C with an appropriate standard library.
Ironically, expressing this in something like SQL actually speaks to the expressivity of the language because the solution was produced entirely with syntactic forms.
That may be true, but it's still a pretty idiomatic Clojure solution. Ask 10 Clojure programmers to solve this problem and most of them will come up with something similar. Ask 10 C programmers and they will likely come back with a program much more similar to the one in the post.
The fact that such functions are at a Clojure programmer's fingertips is exceptionally important. If you strip out the core functions (and macros) from any lisp or Clojure you are left with almost nothing( see http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3482389/how-many-primitiv...).
`frequencies` is surprisingly useful, enough to justify its inclusion into core. I once pondered why.
Consider that in Clojure, a common act transforming one datastructure into another. Typically only a few kinds: maps, sets, and some kind of sequence.
What is a highly common generic transformation of a sequence to a map? `frequencies`. Particularly since you'd only be doing this with pretty finite sequences, given the finite nature of the built-in maps. Finite here means countable. What generic, domain-independent thing would you be counting? Often, the items themselves.
Ironically, expressing this in something like SQL actually speaks to the expressivity of the language because the solution was produced entirely with syntactic forms.
What? Pure untyped lambda calculus does things "only with syntactic forms". Don't tell me that your solution wouldn't use some basic operators other than rudimentary syntax. Keep in mind that in Lisp-family languages, many things that are a part of syntax in other languages are actually simple functions - arithmetic operations being a case in point - so you really can't avoid using library functions.
I believe that the major point of Clojure etc. is that they provide concise basic operations that you can use everywhere to compose complex operations better than you can do with, say, C#.
Uh, no. Your solution just uses a bunch of standard library functions (at least, I hope they're not syntactic forms… and why a function as specific as "frequencies" not in some namespace boggles my mind). I could write that in C with an appropriate standard library.
Ironically, expressing this in something like SQL actually speaks to the expressivity of the language because the solution was produced entirely with syntactic forms.