Clojure Gazette 158: Survey, Mystics, Embodiment

Survey, Mystics, Embodiment

Issue 158 - Febuary 1, 2016

Hi Clojuristas,

Well, the State of Clojure Survey results are in. They show great growth and several areas of improvement that real people are asking for.

I think that Clojure is making a strong showing. It began its life with strong messages about deep principles in programming that, at the time, were well-known but popularly ignored when designing a language. I'm talking about immutable values, a model of time, and the value of deep thought. Those principles built the community of early adopters. These principles are still appreciated by Clojurists.

We're seeing that the massive number of new Clojurists is now demanding better documentation and error messages. That's a good sign. The core value is there, and people either want to use it or are using it with trouble. We're well passed the early adopter stage and need to work on "onboarding".

But one of the main reasons I like Clojure is that it does take a strong leadership position on some issues. Rich Hickey is quoted quite a lot, even outside of the Clojure world. I'm confident that will continue. New people are flooding into Clojure. And the question we have to ask is what we're willing to do to help them.

The open sourcing of clojure.org is a significant step toward better documentation. We're seeing strong signals about the importance of improving error messages. Colin Fleming's talk at Clojure/conj is one example, and Elena Machkasova's talk at Clojure/West is another. As much as I'd love for Clojure to lead the programming world with better error messages, I'd settle for following Elm .

I'm thinking about Clojure and its place in the world a lot now. I'm going to be on the Clojure in the Community panel at Clojure Remote next week. I hope you can tune in.

Please enjoy the issue.

Rock on!

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Sponsor: Clojure Remote

I was skeptical at first of Clojure Remote. Why pay to watch conference videos online? But this is more than watching videos. It's two tracks of intensive online interaction. You get to chat with other attendees and ask the presenters questions, which are aggregated and up-voted. It's a great way to learn without paying for travel or taking time off. The schedule is out now . I'm glad to support Clojure Remote, and thanks for supporting the Gazette! Buy your tickets through the link above to save 25% off the normal price.

Experience, Embodiment, Ecology Vimeo

Phoenix Perry is an inspiration. She talks about making physical interactive installations.

Frameworks For Mystics Vimeo

Devine Lu Linvega is impressive. He develops his own tools for everything. I wish I did that.

State of Clojure 2015 Survey Results

Yay! The results are in. And this analysis, while somewhat rosy, is an important read from the company that stewards Clojure. Most impressive to me is the growth.

Cuttle GitHub

A ClojureScript build GUI. There's a button to build your pro ject and shows you compiler errors and warnings graphically.

Proto REPL

A Clojure IDE and REPL for Atom. I've never used Atom, but this looks good and might be interesting.

Geometer GitHub

An "interactive playground" for the th.ng libraries for generative 3D modeling.

Clojure Survey 2015 Analysis by Daniel Compton

This is less of an analysis and more of an organization and review of excerpts from the comments section of the survey. A very nice read if you don't want to go through all of the comments. Remember that the comments let people mention things that aren't asked in the multiple choice questions.

Contributor Covenant

I think I mentioned this about 25 weeks back. It's an important cause, so I'll mention it again. The internet is a wild west. And like in lawless places, communities need to police themselves. The last thing you want to do is let the chips fall where they may. That overwhelmingly favors people who already have privilege and power.