PurelyFunctional.tv Newsletter 297: Beginner Experience Edition
Issue 297 - October 22, 2018 · Archives · Subscribe
Hi Clojurists (beginner, intermediate, and/or advanced),
I wanted to write a long diatribe about how much Cognitect does to improve the error messages and about the generosity of releasing Clojure as open source. But I'm tired. I'm tired of all the complaining!
So I'm just going to ask for a favor. Clojure/conj is coming up. I can't make it this year, unfortunately. But if you are going, when you're there, and you see Rich, just walk up to him and say "Thank you for all of your work". He works hard on Clojure and you don't pay anything for it. He deserves at least a "thanks".
I was this close to quitting programming about eight years ago. I was looking into becoming a school teacher. It was only the growth of functional programming, in no small part due to Rich, that kept me around. I know what it's like when people online loudly disrespect my work. And Clojure is 100 times more popular than anything I've done. The disrespect is probably 100 times more.
You should go the extra mile. The Conj is a little more than a month away. Start planning now, and get Rich, or Stu, or Alex, or someone a gift. Something small but meaningful. Present the gift when you say thank you. It's not about "paying them back". It's about showing your appreciation, because that's about all the payment they'll ever get.
Rock on!
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The Father Of Mobile Computing Is Not Impressed
Alan Kay has a lot to say about making products easy to use and popular. I started reading this article again because of the ongoing discussion that we inadvertently reignited with Stu on the show. I hope it will elevate the conversation.
Apropos Clojure #20 YouTube
Stuart Halloway joined us on Apropos to talk about the error message work that's gone into Clojure 1.10. It improves the out-of-the-box experience AND the power of tooling.
Sources of complexity in software Podcast
I talk about the difference between essential complexity and accidental complexity.
The Hard Parts of Open Source YouTube
Did you know that even Evan Czaplicki, probably the gentlest of language creators, gets yelled at for Elm? In this talk, he breaks down three tendencies we see in online communities and traces their origins. He mentions a blog post hating on Clojure, and Rich Hickey's response. What are we doing to these people who share so much for free?
Running With Scissors: Live Coding With Data YouTube
Stuart Halloway has been on a mission to spread the techniques of highly interactive, REPL-driven development.
A Model of Interceptors From the archives
I developed a model of interceptors with an operation for combining two interceptors into a bigger interceptor. I hope this might be useful one day for a project I've been fantasizing.
How Lisp Became God's Own Programming Language
A nice, concise history of the development of Lisp.
Help Them Help You
Radford Smith's perspective on the brouhaha over Cloj ure's beginner experience.
Categories for the Working Hacker YouTube
Philip Wadler sharing mathematical ideas from Category Theory. I've been following Philip Wadler for a while (he invented a lot of stuff in use in Haskell) and he's quite a smart guy. This may be the most accessible talk on Category Theory he's ever given---and perhaps the most accessible explanation of the ideas behind Category Theory on the web.
Clojure Spec and Error Messages Podcast
Ben Brinckerhoff was on The REPL podcast. He's the creator of Expound. He talks about Elm's error messages, the purpose of Expound, and more. It couldn't be more timely.
Clojure Collections Currently recording
More lesson in this course! It's almost done recording!
Since last week, here are the new lessons:
- Transients (temporary mutable copies)
- Using a queue in an atom (peeking and popping transactionally)
- Hybrid collections (when no one collection is just right)
- Hybrid collection types (defining custom types that act like collections)
