PurelyFunctional.tv Newsletter 258: Reality, Hiccup, Relational

Written by Eric Normand. Published: January 1, 2018.

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Issue 258 - January 01, 2018 · Archives · Subscribe

Happy New Year!

Please enjoy the issue.

Rock on!

PS Want to get this in your email? Subscribe!

Clojure SYNC Hotel Rates extended (but expiring soon)

I know there are some of you who have not gotten your lodging for Clojure SYNC. Well, you've got a little bit more time. It expired a couple of weeks ago, but the hotels have extended it until January 4. These are awesome hotels and we're getting a great deal. Book your hotels before they expire for good. I don't think they'll extend them again.

Zach Oakes on defn Podcast

Zach Oakes, of Nightcode, Nightlight, and Nightcoders.net fame, was interviewed on the best vegetarian Clojure podcast. Check it out.

Data and Reality Book

This is a database book by William Kent. It contains a lot of wisdom about the challenges of fitting the messiness of the real world into the cold, rigid rectangles of database tables. It almost makes me think that programming has broken the illusion that clean theories can describe the world---because, as we know with only a little experience with data modeling, that things are not quite as easy as it seems when you speak a natural-language description of a problem.

A Practical Functional Relational Architecture YouTube

Ultimately, this talk by David Nolen is about Datomic. But he approaches it through a classic paper, Out of the Tarpit, which describes how much of our software complexity is incidental instead of essential.

A new Hiccup compiler for Clojurescript

This article describes a compiler for Hiccup that targets React.createElement calls, similar to how JSX is compiled. What I like the most is that it's extensible. You can add your own transformation rules. I'd love for someone to show me how best to integrate this into Reagent.

Using Artificial Intelligence to Augment Human Intelligence

A great article about how Artificial Intelligence can be used to enhance human creativity. This is just one article in Distill magazine, which has high-quality articles explaining difficult machine-learning concepts.

Share the nitty-gritty details of your Clojure workflow!

This discussion on Clojureverse is awesome. We've all got such different ways of coding! We need to catalog these things. REPL-driven-development means different things to different people.

PurelyFunctional.tv Personal Learning Plan

Do you have big plans to learn Clojure in the New Year? If you become a member (monthly or yearly) in the month of January (or you're already a member), you'll get a 30-minute coaching session with me where we'll discuss your goals and I'll develop a custom learning plan for you. If you're already a member, watch for an email with instructions to set up the call. You'll also get instructions right after you sign up.