PurelyFunctional.tv Newsletter 269: Elements, Domains, Revenge!
Issue 269 - March 19, 2018 · Archives · Subscribe
Elements of Clojure Book
Zach Tellman's book is now a complete draft of the book. It's all there, folks, after years of anticipation. This book should be read by all Clojurists and has a lot to offer serious programmers of any language. It's a journey through the difficult topics of naming, abstraction, indirection, and composition. We were lucky enough to get a preview of the material at Clojure SYNC during his talk. Keep an eye out for the publication of his talk.
Apropos Episode 3 YouTube
Apropos is a new show that Ray McDermott has put together. There's a panel of four Clojurists and we talk about news for 30 minutes, then jump into a REPL. If you're just interested in the news, you can hear it as a podcast. Of course, watching the show live, so you can participate in the discussion, is the best experience. Subscribe to the YouTube channel and/or the Twitter feed to know when it's live.
Broad Band Book
Claire Evans has created a study of important women in the history of computing. It starts with Ada Lovelace, of course, but quickly gets deep into the stories of women who were written out of history while engineering software---and basically inventing the techniques we take for granted today---on early computers during World War II and after. I was surprised, angered, and inspired by something in every chapter.
[Revenge of the Pragmatists](https://clojuresync.com/ba
ishampayan-ghose/) Clojure SYNC Video
Baishampayan Ghose opened Clojure SYNC with this amazing talk about what he learned creating a very early Clojure company. He built a team of 80 Clojure programmers, starting back in 2008.
You can watch the video, download slides, and read the transcript.
How to Be Idle Book
I just finished this book by Tom Hodgkinson. Now, I don't agree with everything in this book. But it is an intelligent expression of a perspective I don't encounter every day. I appreciated the many quotes of people from across history praising naps, long walks, and sleeping in. It seems that defending a slower, less ambitious pace is nothing new. Especially since I am building a business, it was good to hear a guilt-free praise of rest.
Domain Specific Languages in Clojure
My new video course about one of the coolest ideas in Computer Science and certainly one of the best features of Lisps: writing interpreters and compilers. It turns out that this is not so hard! But the leverage is enormous! A small amount of code can drastically increase the expressivity of your code.
There are seven lessons so far. We start with some definitions, then quickly move into a Hiccup interpreter. Then we convert the interpreter into a compiler! Along the way, we set up a nice Test-Driven Development workflow we can run from the command line.
