Elise Huard EuroClojure 2017 Interview
Elise Huard will be giving a talk at EuroClojure 2017. Her talk is called The Return of Clojure Data Science.
Follow Elise on her Homepage, GitHub and Twitter.
PurelyFunctional.tv: How did you get into Clojure?
Elise Huard: Slowly. I worked at a company that was using clojure, but wasn't working in clojure myself. I was curious, so started doing 4clojure exercises and reading up on it. I made a small web app in clojure which did what I wanted it to do, but then had a large break of a couple of years where I did Haskell work, before starting at my current job, which is clojure full time!
PF.tv: What is your talk about?
EH: It's about doing data science with clojure - a large part of my day job is data analysis and data science, and it would be good to be able to do all stages of a project in clojure. I'm mapping out what is there in the clojure ecosystem, and what I feel is lacking, possibly to formulate a roadmap.
PF.tv: Who is your talk for?
EH: It's for clojurists who also want to do some data science (and let's face it, who doesn't these days), or data scientists who'd like to use clojure.
PF.tv: What do you hope people will take away from the talk?
EH: An awareness of what's out there, and where the ecosystem is not quite ready yet, and hopefully a willingness to help out with it!
PF.tv: What concepts do you recommend people be familiar with to maximize their experience with the talk?
EH: A working knowledge of clojure, or at least some basics. If it's going to entail active discussion at the end, then some concepts of data science.
PF.tv: What resources are available for people who want to study up before the talk?
EH: "Clojure for Data Science" is a great book by my colleague Henry Garner. There are a few great onli ne courses, one of the best being the coursera one. Not required, only if you're really interested. :)
PF.tv: Where can people follow you online?
EH: twitter: @elise_huard
PF.tv: Are there any projects you'd like people to be aware of? How can people help out?
EH: I think there's a lot of gold in incanter, but it needs to be extracted into separate project. Anything that improves gorilla-repl, or even the start of a new notebook more based on clojurescript, might be good. Then there's lot of machine learning libraries in the java world that could use some nice clojure bindings!
PF.tv: Where do you see the state of Clojure in 10 years?
EH: Unless there's a large adopter company, I'm not sure it'll ever be completely mainstream, but I feel it will continue have a significant and enthousiastic user base. Giving it a strong ecosystem will give it the best of chances.
PF.tv: If Clojure were an animal, what animal would it be?
EH: A flying crane.
