Official Clojure Documentary page with Video, Shownotes, and Links • Hacker News Board

Re: Official Clojure Documentary page with Video, Shownotes, and Links

#41

Post by wazHFsRy » Fri, Apr 17, 2026, 5:21 AM UTC

mkw5053 wrote: post #35

xmonkee wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you feel about it now? Like holistically.

I miss it. I’m now more removed and building software as a means to an end. I miss it just like I miss the program language and type theory group meetups in SF and working through problems in dependently types languages like Idris and being out of my depth.

I felt exactly the same, but recently started building side projects again in Haskell and fell in love again. Really brought my passion for software development back. 2026 feels perfect for that, as AI can help with things where one was stuck, not the stuck in a good learning way, forever in the past. Now is the time!

Re: Official Clojure Documentary page with Video, Shownotes, and Links

#42

Post by adityaathalye » Fri, Apr 17, 2026, 5:28 AM UTC

mkw5053 wrote: post #17

TacticalCoder wrote: post #10

Incredible: I had not idea NuBank discovered Datomic first and that it's Datomic that led them to Clojure, 100 million+ customers, and eventually acquiring Cognitect. Good to see David Nolen (aka "swanodette") is in the documentary too. As a bonus here's a recent talk from David Nolen about Clojure/ClojureScript and using DOM morphing instead of React. If you don't want to watch it all, just take two minutes to watch…

I don't know if it's still the case, but at old clojure conferences, or meetups, or places of employment, emacs was a prereq and assumed (and the most enjoyable)

I think it was more like Emacs got Clojure development niceties early, particularly tight REPL integration.

Things have been different for well over five years --- about a third of Clojure's life. There are so many first-class options now. When teaching Clojure, I direct everybody to either VSCode + Calva, or Intellij + Cursive.

LSP has really upped the game too. I rebuilt my Emacs development workflow around LSP for all the things.

These days, I sometimes forget to fire up the REPL, because of all this fantastic "static analysis style" developer tooling by borkdude and eric dallo.

Much gratitude to all the toolsmiths from all over the Clojure ecosystem. Special shout-out to LightTable for upping the game for everybody. I was very sad when the project went dormant.

Re: Official Clojure Documentary page with Video, Shownotes, and Links

#43

Post by lemming » Fri, Apr 17, 2026, 5:38 AM UTC

adityaathalye wrote: post #42

mkw5053 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if it's still the case, but at old clojure conferences, or meetups, or places of employment, emacs was a prereq and assumed (and the most enjoyable)

I think it was more like Emacs got Clojure development niceties early, particularly tight REPL integration. Things have been different for well over five years --- about a third of Clojure's life. There are so many first-class options now. When teaching Clojure, I direct everybody to either VSCode + Calva, or Intellij + Cursive. LSP has really upped the game too. I rebuilt my Emacs development workflow around LSP for…

Things have been different for well over five years...

In fact, I first presented Cursive at the conj 2014, and I'd been working on it in open beta for perhaps a year before that, so well over 10 years!

...all this fantastic "static analysis style" developer tooling by borkdude and eric dallo.

ahem

Re: Official Clojure Documentary page with Video, Shownotes, and Links

#44

Post by pjmlp » Fri, Apr 17, 2026, 5:39 AM UTC

Clojure is my favourite alternative language on the JVM, besides offering what Lisps have provided for decades, their philosophy of embracing the host platform, instead of all the talk that the next JVM will be rewriten in it like some others do, makes being around Clojure folks much more appealing.

Re: Official Clojure Documentary page with Video, Shownotes, and Links

#45

Post by pjmlp » Fri, Apr 17, 2026, 5:46 AM UTC

TacticalCoder wrote: post #10

Incredible: I had not idea NuBank discovered Datomic first and that it's Datomic that led them to Clojure, 100 million+ customers, and eventually acquiring Cognitect. Good to see David Nolen (aka "swanodette") is in the documentary too. As a bonus here's a recent talk from David Nolen about Clojure/ClojureScript and using DOM morphing instead of React. If you don't want to watch it all, just take two minutes to watch…

Emacs has always had a tight link with Lisp communities, due to its history, including ties to Lisp Machines, so naturally many use it.

However, as someone that rather use Lispworks, Allegro, Racket, there is also Cursive on top of InteliJ.

However note that XEmacs was my IDE replacement during my first UNIX decade, due to lack of proper alternatives, so I do know about what Emacs and its derivatives are capable of, no need for yes but replies.

Re: Official Clojure Documentary page with Video, Shownotes, and Links

#46

Post by macmac » Fri, Apr 17, 2026, 6:11 AM UTC

iLemming wrote: post #24

christophilus wrote: post #21

Excellent. The only thing I wish they had added was borkdude.

Yes, sad there's no European presence (unless I missed someone). There's tons of Clojure over there. Metosin, Juxt, Borkent, Gaiwan (Arne), Flexiana, Peter Strömberg (Calva), Dustin Getz (hyperfiddle/electric), Christophe Grand (ClojureDart), Bojidar (CIDER), Renzo, and many, many more.

I agree. Probably a cost issue as all interviews appear to be done in person.

Re: Official Clojure Documentary page with Video, Shownotes, and Links

#47

Post by boriskourt » Fri, Apr 17, 2026, 6:50 AM UTC

I’ve been using Clojure since 2013, and can say that it has been an enormous positive force in my life. I’ve been a very unorthodox user, most of my artworks were built using Clojure in some way. But I’ve also worked in industry, and there I think Clojure helped me avoid burnout on more than one occasion. Especially when running a startup built half on it :)

It’s also been a privilege to participate in the community. From Clojure west to the Conj, to the online discussions. Huge thanks to everyone that’s made this possible over the decades.

Re: Official Clojure Documentary page with Video, Shownotes, and Links

#48

Post by TurboHaskal » Fri, Apr 17, 2026, 7:23 AM UTC

chii wrote: post #37

mkw5053 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m no longer in a professional engineering position and have a family and toddler so less time for learning about or playing with program languages. Clojure is what really made me first start thinking about programming languages and down the rabbit hole of scala and Haskell and idris and type theory books. Which are incredible and I can’t recommend more and also not remotely practical.

> also not remotely practical. studying them makes you smarter, which makes you better at using the practical stuff.

It also makes you bitter, at least in my experience.

Re: Official Clojure Documentary page with Video, Shownotes, and Links

#49

Post by dgb23 » Fri, Apr 17, 2026, 8:07 AM UTC

pjmlp wrote: post #44

Clojure is my favourite alternative language on the JVM, besides offering what Lisps have provided for decades, their philosophy of embracing the host platform, instead of all the talk that the next JVM will be rewriten in it like some others do, makes being around Clojure folks much more appealing.

When I was younger this actually irked me a bit. I wasn't familiar with either, so it felt burdensome to me. The tooling also wasn't as good as it is now.

However there's no doubt that this is one of the primary reasons why Clojure became relevant and widely used (for a niche language). Seamless integration (or even improved integration) is very useful.

Another language that takes this approach is Zig. My intuition is that here as well, it's a unique selling point that will help with adoption and day to day usefulness.

Re: Official Clojure Documentary page with Video, Shownotes, and Links

#50

Post by simongray » Fri, Apr 17, 2026, 8:17 AM UTC

iLemming wrote: post #24

christophilus wrote: post #21

Excellent. The only thing I wish they had added was borkdude.

Yes, sad there's no European presence (unless I missed someone). There's tons of Clojure over there. Metosin, Juxt, Borkent, Gaiwan (Arne), Flexiana, Peter Strömberg (Calva), Dustin Getz (hyperfiddle/electric), Christophe Grand (ClojureDart), Bojidar (CIDER), Renzo, and many, many more.

I am pretty sure Dustin Getz is American.