Bananas, Bipolar, Relativity

Clojure Gazette

Issue 123April 26, 2015

Editorial

Hi Clojurists,

Clojure/West happened this week. Many videos have been released (I think one or more did not make it). Of course I've been busy with those, but I haven't seen them all yet. From what I've seen, this was the best speaker lineup at a Clojure conference to date.

There are exciting times ahead. The optimism of React (in the browser and Native) is palpable. And the increasing effort to diversify the community is compelling (though there's a long way to go!). Finally, I liked the new format: talks of different length to accommodate more, smaller talks.

Rock on!
Eric Normand

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The ReactJS Landscape Youtube

Luke VanderHart gives a thorough overview (at Clojure/West) of the three main ReactJS ClojureScript libraries: Om, Reagent, and his own Quiescent. His descriptions lay clear the strengths and weaknesses of each.

Building CircleCI's Front end With Om Youtube

A very nice talk at Clojure/West by Brandon Bloom. I love the closing section, where he posits that Clojure + ClojureScript have the technology to build rich web applications an order of magnitude faster than other languages. We just need to put them together.

I agree with this sentiment. It is only a matter of time.

Redesiging a Broken Internet Youtube

Cory Doctorow is a sci-fi write and electronic freedom advocate. This talk explains the problems with new legislation trying to restrict the universality of universal computers and how it affects our lives. This issue is becoming more and more important as computers are embedded in everything.

Capacitive Touch Banana Piano using Clojure / Overtone Youtube

A short video showing how to make a banana keyboard that plays music with Overtone. Why not?

Prof. Sussman's Reading List

Hello? I love recommended reading from great minds.

The Relativity of Wrong

It's common to think that every scientific theory will eventually be overturned. And so anything we believe today will be wrong very soon. So why invest any belief in current ideas? Isaac Asimov explains that although theories are replaced with better ones, we can't really say that the old ones are absolutely wrong, only more wrong than the new one.

How to Tell if You've Accidentally Built a Language Youtube

Jeanine Adkisson do es it again with her magic touch of insightful analysis and playful slides. This one is about why one might design a language, with some helpful hints about how to go about it. This is my favorite Clojure/West talk so far.

Spreading parentheses of love

A great writeup of the recent ClojureBridge London workshop. It's great to see something so positive. I hope the attendees go on to explore great things!

The State of Clojure on Android

A nice benchmark showing the results of last year's Google Summer of Code project called Skummet , which aimed to reduce Clojure startup times. Did it work? You'll have to read the graphs to find out.

The Bipolar Lisp Programmer

Way back in 2007, people were still wrestling with the "failure of Lisp". After falling from the peak of its promise in the 1980s, people wondered why "inferior" languages---even inferior models of computation---were popular while Lisp, obviously better for many problems, was ridiculed. This essay is one of those soul-searching pieces.