Specter vs "first" function

gistfile1.txt

Benchmark code: https://github.com/nathanmarz/specter/blob/master/scripts/benchmarks.clj#L176
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Benchmark: first value of a size 10 vector (10000000 iterations)

Avg(ms)		vs best		Code
261.98 		 1.00 		 (select-any FIRST data)
277.11 		 1.06 		 (select-any ALL data)
337.43 		 1.29 		 (select-first ALL data)
561.89 		 2.14 		 (first data)

You can get the first element of a vector with optimal performance with (nth v 0), but first is the higher-level way of expressing that. Saying use a different data structure if you care about first is strange to me. This isn't like prepending an element where a list is clearly the superior data structure (I think that should be supported too but that's a totally separate discussion where we have major philosophical differences). This is an operation which the data structure is perfectly capable of doing extremely fast, as (nth v 0) shows.

I also question whether or not there's even a tradeoff here if implemented carefully. If first() is factored out of ISeq into its own interface, why can't vectors implement that? Are there concerns about inline caches becoming megamorphic?

@ztellman: vectors are persistent collections and are always fully realized, so having it "stay in memory" is naturally part of the deal. I'm not arguing with you that first could be always O(1) on vectors. The point I made above is that the sequence abstraction concerns both first and rest and the latter is the one that seems harder to me.

@nathanmarz the last suggestion is interesting. would need some criteria and tests to evaluate more.

@puredanger Thanks for the explanation.