Interaction, Profiling, and Rants

Clojure Gazette

Issue 1.89August 17, 2014

Editorial

Hey clojurenators,

I just bought my tickets to Washington, DC for the Clojure/conj! I hope to see you there. High fives are waiting. In the meantime, check out this issue.

Sincerely,
Eric Normand

PS Learn more about the Clojure Gazette and subscribe.

Sponsor: Brick Alloy

Thanks to the very first sponsor, Brick Alloy. Brick Alloy is a band of senior consultants that solve really hard scalability and security problems. These are the people behind the Lift web framework for Scala, which is the most secure web framework out there. They help you with the whole stack, from the user experience down to the scaling infrastructure.

They also support lots of Clojure-related things you've heard of: ClojureBridge, Typed Clojure, and Clojure/West, among others. They have a very interesting organization: it's more like a law firm where everyone brings in clients and they share in successes. Check out their team and say hi on Twitter.

Lisping at JPL

An interesting look at some of the projects that went into space that used Lisp. I'm skeptical that one sentence killed Lisp at the JPL. It makes the story too good. However, they did stop after having lots of successes, so it couldn't have been a completely rational decision. DISCUSS

LispCast Intro to Clojure Workshop

I talked about this in the last issue. The Austin Clojure Meetup is hosting a beginner's Clojure workshop using my videos next Saturday. There's no real affiliation with LispCast other than what comes with the standard group license. You can host a similar workshop yourself! DISCUSS

Of Oxen, Carts and Ordering

A nice report on the progress Reid McKenzie has made during his Google Summer of Code project. The project, called Oxcart, intends to produce a more efficiently compile Clojure by removing Vars that are not needed at runtime. I also appreciate that he write about a lot that he has learned. DISCUSS

Gorilla REPL

This is a really neat looking project to create a notebook-style REPL for Clojure. That means something more like what you see in Mathematica: there are mathematical formulas, graphs, and other graphical elements that are all created by the code. Watch the videos and join the development if you're interested. DISCUSS

Application Architecture for Developers

This book by Clojurist Ryan Neufeld surprised me. The title is a little bland. And I tend to think I know a thing or two about software architecture. But Ryan has boiled it down to a science. The book gets better and better the further into it you go. It's got a step-by-step process for systematically designing your architecture. Follow the link above for a 25% discount. DISCUSS

perforate

A library and leiningen plugin to perform benchmark tests on your code. You set up the benchmarks and then you can run them as a lein command. DISCUSS

Ten Reasons to use Clojure/ClojureScript on your next web dev project

I like these kinds of posts for a few reasons. They often go viral and get a lot of exposure outside of the Clojure blogosphere. They are aimed at smart beginners who can understand some of the deeper aspects of language choice. And this one is pretty good at hitting the philosophical nail on the head: Clojure is smart and pragmatic. DISCUSS

Done, and Gets Things Smart

Steve Yegge write longs posts. It's a fact. And whether or not you agree with him, he's a smart guy so it's often thought-provoking. This is one of his best articles, in my opinion. It's insightful and witty. It talks about how to identify good programmers despite the Dunning-Kruger effect. DISCUSS

Riemann JVM Profiler

Riemann JVM Profiler injects into the JVM and sends data to a Riemann server. You can answer questions like "Across this thousand-node Hadoop job, what functions consume the most CPU time, and why?" I've never used it but it looks very useful for distributed systems or realtime monitoring. DISCUSS

Twixt

An extensible asset pipeline for Clojure web apps. DISCUSS

packr

Build distributable executables from a JAR and a JVM instance. It can create Linux, Mac, and Windows programs from a JAR. It has tools for minifying the JRE to make it smaller to distribute. DISCUSS

[Removing User Interface Complexity,

or Why React is Awesome](http://jlongster.com/Removing-User-Interface-Complexity,-or-Why-React-is-Awesome)

I love interactive articles. Especially interactive meta-articles that use the library they are about to build the interaction. DISCUSS

The Secrets of React's Virtual DOM

Another great talk about React. It's the same stuff you have probably already heard. But it's a good message and more people need to hear it. If you have not watched a talk about "Why React?", watch this one. And share it with your friends. DISCUSS