Yehonathan Sharvit Clojure Remote 2017 Interview

Yehonathan Sharvit will be giving a workshop at Clojure Remote 2017. He will be speaking about Clojure.Spec.

Get your tickets today.

Follow him on Twitter and GitHub.

PurelyFunctional.tv: How did you get into functional programming?

Yehonathan Sharvit: I was always amazed by Set Theory and its paradoxes when dealing with the infinity (e.g. Russell's paradox). Then I discovered that the Lambda Calculus is one possible foundation for the arithmetics. I looked for Lambda Calculus applications and this is how I came to SICP - I watched all the videos of the course on my iPod Touch back in 2011). But I was sure that LISP is an important but dead language (like the greek) until I discovered Clojure in January 2012. This is how I discovered functional programming.

PF.tv: What is your talk about?

My talk is going to be about Clojure.Spec its concepts and syntax and how it completely redefines what we can do in Clojure. The talk will be composed of 2 parts:

A. Intro to Clojure.Spec: what is it? how to use it? lot of simple code examples?

B. Amazing applications of Clojure.Spec: define custom defn (or let) like macros with a couple of lines of code, define your own grammar etc.

PF.tv: How is your talk different from the tutorials on Clojure.spec that are available on the internet today?

YS: My tutorial is going to feature interactive code snippets (powered by KLIPSE).

PF.tv: That's cool. So people will get to try the code out themselves while you guide them?

YS: Exactly.

PF.tv: What do you hope people will take away from the talk?

YS: My hope is that people will get excited by the opportunities that clojure.spec opens for our code. That they will take the time to "spec-ify" part of their code. And that they will write new cool stuff with clojure.spec. And maybe a few of them will come up with an interactive blog post with cool applications of clojure.spec.

PF.tv: What concepts do you recommend people be familiar with to maximize their experience with the talk?

YS: A basic notion of clojure.spec.

PF.tv: What resources are available for people who want to study up before the talk?

YS: Interactive clojure.spec tutorial.

PF.tv: Where can people follow you online?

YS: On Twitter.

PF.tv: Are there any projects you'd like people to be aware of? How can people help out?

YS: klipse

It would be nice if people take time to make some clojure lib self-host compatible.

I have started to port core.match and I need more people to vote for the JIRA ticket.

PF.tv: Where do you see the state of functional programming in 10 years?

YS: Clojure - or its sequel - becomes a mainstream language in backend and frontend.

PF.tv: If functional programming were a superhero, what superpower would it have?

YS: It would have the power to convince more people to move away from OO into FP.

PF.tv: Thanks for the interview!

YS: Thanks for interviewing me.