Welcome to 2013.
I missed a few issues of the Gazette because of the holidays and two simultaneous project launches. The company I work for, Scrive, has launched a
new site design. I also launched, with the
Southern Food and Beverage Museum, an
international culinary dictionary called Nitty Grits. It is written in Clojure.
The beginning of the year is a time for looking back. When I look back at 2012, I see some important trends. Most important of all of them is the rippling out of huge ideas from the center of Clojure (Rich Hickey) outward to libraries in Clojure and beyond. The biggest idea of all was the definition of simplicity Rich Hickey
presented at Strange Loop 2011. When we look at it now, it seems silly we ever equated simplicity with ease. The word "to complect" is used a lot.
Another idea is
data-driven programming. Though nothing new, it is seeing renewed interest with Clojure's literal syntax.
edn makes it even more possible. More and more libraries are building "grammars" of literal data structures.
The third idea I see spreading through the Clojure meme-space and beyond is that of
immutable values. Hickey asks us to rethink what we mean by "memory" and "records". Again, looking back, it seems crazy that we don't treat our records as immutable.
