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Nubank acquires Cognitect

cognitect.com

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Re: Nubank acquires Cognitect

#161

Post by jwr »

swyx wrote: post #156
jwr wrote: post #117

My entire business is built on Clojure and ClojureScript, and it would not have been possible without these languages. I am always slightly worried by this kind of news, because it means that the main Clojure team is now dependent on a single institution. But it could be good news as well, depending on how things go. Until now, I've been getting nothing but excellence from the Clojure team: not just great tools, but…

what was your decision process leading to bet on Clojure?

I used to enjoy programming in Common Lisp, then saw a talk by Rich Hickey which intrigued me. I gave Clojure a try (this was about 8 years ago I think) and (much to my surprise) it turned out it works really well. It also turned out that a coherent concurrency story is important, and that programming with mutable data is not a very good idea after all, so I abandoned CL completely.

Over the years, I got many fantastic gifts: ClojureScript, transducers, core.async, spec — and more. I'm very happy with the choice. I also think my business would not have been possible without Clojure and ClojureScript: the leverage I have because of them lets me run a single-founder self-funded business.

Re: Nubank acquires Cognitect

#163

Post by jwr »

jonahbenton wrote: post #131
jwr wrote: post #117

My entire business is built on Clojure and ClojureScript, and it would not have been possible without these languages. I am always slightly worried by this kind of news, because it means that the main Clojure team is now dependent on a single institution. But it could be good news as well, depending on how things go. Until now, I've been getting nothing but excellence from the Clojure team: not just great tools, but…

Would love to hear what you learn from engaging on any expectations you have for roadmap. I wrote separately that I see a bright (very bright, complete game changer) future for the toolchain in finance, but finance is a special ecosystem where general purpose languages with goofy syntax become niche- sometimes very large niche, but still niche.

Niche is fine. I don't know why people are obsessed with languages becoming dominant, or enjoy calling languages "dead". I don't need everyone to use Clojure. In fact, I'd rather prefer that my competitors use something else, because it gives me an edge over them.

I don't have "expectations", I think "hopes" is a better word here. I hope to continue to profit from the core team's thinking and be able to use the tools they create and ideas they generate.

Re: Nubank acquires Cognitect

#164

Post by juskrey »

jonahbenton wrote: post #146
juskrey wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no issues with financial things per se - I have built several financial systems (from crypto to funds management) with Datomic and Clojure myself. And this is also one of the reasons I think having sole bank as your owner is a really really bad thing.

Say more? Would be helpful for others to further articulate your observations and opinions. No one has all the answers. For all who have a stake a full diversity of views is best.

I'll be really short: the bank lends money in Brazilian real to credit card holders and, in addition, keeps half of that in financial derivatives. The last real slide (3x in value) was in 2011-2016. Current world situation is.. interesting, to say at least, and 1 billion of VC money are not charity.

Re: Nubank acquires Cognitect

#165

Post by juskrey »

dustingetz wrote: post #155
juskrey wrote: post #86

Pretty strange how no one else sees that banks are very very fragile institutions, plus this one is heavily VC-ed, which makes everything they claim in public irrelevant (this is if we want to trust what any bank says at all). What is relevant is that Cognitect will now have 100% of income coming from the single (and fragile) source, they now do not have to compete and survive on their own, they can't say "no" when h…

Nubank raised nearly a billion $ since 2018, hard to see that being bad in any possible way for Datomic to have access to those resources

That billion is not a charity, but comes with some people pursuing some things. Most of the time that "things" are to make a PR stunt, inflate and sell.

Re: Nubank acquires Cognitect

#166

Post by beders »

hk__2 wrote: post #96
orolle wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is nature of the problem space which requires you to produce high quality code. If you have a small error in your program, the financial market participants will use it against you to profit. What you loose, others win! Google "fat finger" for examples. In banking you have to keep track of every transactions, see "double accounting". You never delete a transaction, you only retract! Mutablity can cause you a lot o…

> It is nature of the problem space which requires you to produce high quality code. Wouldn’t a strongly-typed language be a better choice here?

Unlikely. At least not for domain modeling.

Especially in that industry where your domain is changing all the time, where regulations are changing all the time, where the ability to reason about your domain at different points in time is essential.

Having more flexible types like maps is one of the building blocks to avoid complexity (there are more, more important ones) It sounds counter-intuitive, but it certainly is working out for companies embracing clojure.

Re: Nubank acquires Cognitect

#167

Post by beders »

alexbanks wrote: post #133
orolle wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is nature of the problem space which requires you to produce high quality code. If you have a small error in your program, the financial market participants will use it against you to profit. What you loose, others win! Google "fat finger" for examples. In banking you have to keep track of every transactions, see "double accounting". You never delete a transaction, you only retract! Mutablity can cause you a lot o…

> It is nature of the problem space which requires you to produce high quality code. Would love to see any actual data or studies showing that functional programming implicitly produces "high quality code".

https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2017/10/221326-a-large-scale-...

Section 3, RQ1

Re: Nubank acquires Cognitect

#168

Post by fnordsensei »

maximente wrote: post #108
hk__2 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is nature of the problem space which requires you to produce high quality code. Wouldn’t a strongly-typed language be a better choice here?

this is perhaps controversial but i actually think datomic is so powerful, it's worth using clojure for. in other words, the database is driving the choice of programming language. the idea of viewing a database as an immutable state of the world at a given instant t0, and time becoming a parameter on that state of the world (in order to show changes as time goes forwards [or backwards!]), is extremely, extremely att…

Moreover, transactions are reified and can have arbitrary metadata, so you can query the transaction log itself (for example, "show me all transactions issued by person X").

Re: Nubank acquires Cognitect

#170

Post by alexbanks »

beders wrote: post #167
alexbanks wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is nature of the problem space which requires you to produce high quality code. Would love to see any actual data or studies showing that functional programming implicitly produces "high quality code".

https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2017/10/221326-a-large-scale-... Section 3, RQ1

I have quite a few gripes with this article, and overall question the validity of its assertions, but interesting nonetheless.
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