Clojure Gazette

Issue 1.48 --- August 21, 2013

Editorial

Hello, Clojurites!

I usually try to say something clever and insightful here about the state of Clojure and where it is heading. Honestly, that's getting a little boring. It's in a great place and it's headed to greater places. What more is there to say.

I have been working in Clojure full time and getting paid nicely for it since June. And loving it! I highly recommend it. And because of that, I think I've developed a myopic point of view. I can only see the here and now of Clojure. It's pretty good, and judging by the work being done, it will only get better. But I do remember a point where Clojure seemed to be at the forefront of wonderful new trends nearly every week.

Logic programming. Database programming. Functional programming. A standard data format. All of these things once amazed me and seemed to be streaming out of the Clojure community all the time.

That isn't to say that current progress isn't fast or even amazing. You merely have to step outside of the Clojure world and look in. And we should also not forget that the main philosophical principles of Clojure are still bearing new fruit. The future is bright.

Well, I'd better get back to working directly in Clojure and getting paid for it :)

Sincerely,
Eric Normand

P.S. I love hearing from readers. Just reply to this email!

Reading

core.typed guide

Ambrose Bonnaire-Sergeant wrote up this nice guide to the types in core.typed. I found it to be a great introduction to how to read the type signatures and some of the cool features that are Clojure-specific.

in which the reader is invited to engage in comparative lispology

Very enjoyable read from Phil Hagelberg comparing Scheme, Racket, Clojure, and Emacs Lisp.

Clojure Cup Rules

The Clojure Cup is approaching. They released their rules recently. Form your teams and register on September 7.

Software

lein-try

A neat Leiningen plugin that lets you try out libraries in the REPL without having to create a new project and add them as dependencies.

lein-ancient

Managing dependencies is a pain. I recently found lein-ancient, which tells you which of your product dependencies has a new version. It can also automatically or interactively update your project file to depend on the lastest version.

Honey SQL

A cool library for building up Clojure data structures for representing SQL statements. You can convert your data structures to SQL strings and manipulate them at a high level. I am very excited about this library. I wanted to write something similar, but never found the time. Now I will be able to use this one, instead.

Austin

A ClojureScript browser REPL rebuilt to be easier to use.

Clojure Emacs Hacks

Yes, well, it's always fun to look through other people's emacs configurations. There's often a little trick or two you can pick up.

Watching

clojure-scheme