Clojure Gazette 1.84

Written by Eric Normand. Published: July 13, 2014

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Conferences, Radars, and Lenses

Clojure Gazette

Issue 1.84 July 13, 2014

Editorial

Hi Clojurites,

Please enjoy the issue!

Sincerely,
Eric Normand <ericwnormand@gmail.com>

PS Please follow the DISCUSS links and comment!

Lambda Jam Tickets Still available

The only reason these tickets are not sold out is because it is a newish conference. This is only its second year. I went last time and it was great: awesome topics, amazing participants, and hands-on workshops and jams. Look at the amazing line-up! There's still time to register and get your plane tickets. I wish I could go this year, but I have other obligations. This is one of those conferences that you don't want to miss. It was started by Alex Miller, the man behind Strange Loop and Clojure/West. DISCUSS

Clojure/conj Call for Presentations

The Conj is the premiere Clojure conference. This year held in Washington, D.C. They are still accepting applications for presentations until August 1. If you're accepted, they give you admission, hotel stay, and help with airfare. It's a great opportunity. DISCUSS

ThoughtWorks Technology Radar

A new Technology Radar has been released. Most interesting to me (and likely to you, my amazing readers) is that core.async is in the Trial circle and Om is in the Assess circle. It's surprising that such young technologies are already getting attention from such a large company. I really appreciate the ThoughtWorks Radar because it brings new technologies and practices to my attention. DISCUSS

Build Your Own Technology Radar

Neal Ford explains the purpose of the ThoughtWorks Technology Radar, their process, and how you can write your own. I am thinking about doing this for myself. Have you done something similar? Was it helpful? DISCUSS

Learn Lisp the Hard Way

This is a book written to teach Common Lisp. But it seems to be done in the style of Learn Python the Hard Way, which is super-popular. I'm wondering if anyone would be interested in writing something similar in Clojure. Seriously, email me if you are interested :) DISCUSS

Medley

This library by Weavejester came to my attention a while ago, but it was really too small to mention at the time. It's a library of "functions missing clojure.core". I've been following its development and it now has quite a few useful bits. It is similar to Prismatic's Plumbing. How do you deal with functions that you use all the time, that are general purpose? Would you depend on an external library such as this? Or do you have your own internal module? DISCUSS

Clojure Gotchas

As you learn a language, you develop scar tissue around the warts and often forget how to see those little problems the design choices bring. This post talks about some of Clojure's warts. I find it useful to refresh my memory of those frustrating parts of the language. The comments on this post are interesting as well. Can a language be written without warts? DISCUSS

Chris Ford's Lens Implementation

Lenses are an interesting data structure for representing sub-value access and updates within a value. They compose well functionally. They are used in Haskell, where the type system gives a little help. But this implementation in Clojure is interesting and shows potential. See also these slides and this video (needs login or Twitter) for more information about Lenses. DISCUSS