Expert to Expert: Rich Hickey and Brian Beckman - Inside Clojure

Cross posted from channel9.msdn.c....
Clojure is a dynamic programming language created by Rich Hickey that targets both the Java Virtual Machine and the CLR. It is designed to be a general-purpose language, combining the approachability and interactive development of a scripting language with an efficient and robust infrastructure for multithreaded programming. Clojure is a compiled language - it compiles directly to JVM bytecode, yet remains completely dynamic. Every feature supported by Clojure is supported at runtime. Clojure provides easy access to the Java frameworks, with optional type hints and type inference, to ensure that calls to Java can avoid reflection.
Clojure is a dialect of Lisp, and shares with Lisp the code-as-data philosophy and a powerful macro system. Clojure is predominantly a functional programming language, and features a rich set of immutable, persistent data structures. When mutable state is needed, Clojure offers a software transactional memory system and reactive Agent system that ensure clean, correct, multithreaded designs.
Astrophysicist and Software Architect Brian Beckman interviews Rich Hickey to dig into the details of this very interesting language. If you don't know much about Clojure and the general problems it aims to solve, well, watch and listen carefully to this great conversation with plenty of whiteboarding and outstanding questions. Expert to Expert simply rocks! Thank you for spending time with us, Rich! Clojure is great!

[@heepajunk]

The world needs a ton more of this type of content.

[@sangkim6338]

1:20 what clojure is 1:38 founding ideas of clojure 4:00 why pick Lisp as a base language for clojure 7:11 clojure's evaluation strategy 8:10 how is clojure 'functional'? 13:35 clojure's data structures 15:10 numerics 17:20 //board session// 18:50 how is list different from vector? 20:05 vectors and maps are .. functions! 23:04 two phase syntax (code as data, data as code) 28:05 *** moment of violating immutability *** 28:15 interop example 29:30 clojure concept of identity, in terms of mutability and immutability (how does clojure navigate both) 30:40 persistent data structure 32:25 how clojure implements persistent data structure (hash array mapped tries) 37:25 identities in clojure 38:00 identity and value in OOP perspective 40:06 how clojure fixes the conflation of identity and value (atom, ref) 47:36 example of transaction

[@Korupshenv1]

I think talking about Clojure at this level shows how distinct and unique the language really is compared to others. Rich has done an excellent job on reviving Lisp for the new era where concurrency and immutable data structures should be fundamentals within the language itself. Targeting the JVM was definitely a smart move on Rich's behalf. It's very rare to see this kind of interoperability. Thank you for the upload.

[@christgar64]

Also it targets the CLR of .NET

[@pragyandas]

Clojure has made world a better place...Simply Genius...

[@kshahkshah]

That explained a *lot* of Clojure concepts very very succinctly. Namely what that community means when they refer to 'persistence' and how that affects time complexity of standard operations. Awesome interview.

[@WilkerLucio]

fantastic presentation, Clojure is such a piece of art :)

[@jasonofthel33t]

You're welcome!

[@klgraham]

This sold me on Clojure.

[@abhisheksingh-li6zo]

+Kenneth Graham i can,t understand what u want to say ?? are u mean that u got job in clojure after seeing this video,, how this is possible..?

[@klgraham]

+abhishek singh :-) No... Just that Clojure is a language worth using.

[@vamsideepakampolu8546]

This seems to be the most non-abstract Rich Hickey talk on the internet, I did not understand the last bits but I now know that they exist which means that I can work on figuring them out later.

[@hariharanviswanathan242]

Rich is a genius. Clojure (Lisp) + Haskell + Erlang (concurrency constructs) = ❤️

[@freerunkevin]

What an enlightening talk! They should make some of these concepts into college material, e.g. designing and implementing a persistent, immutable set datastructure. This really shows where these abstract concepts come together in the real world.

[@RogerKeulen]

Thanx for putting this on KZbin Jason !

[@panhao356]

Great speech. Expert to Expert is really insightful.

[@abpdev]

This is an amazing talk!

[@ThomasGoossens]

Great conversation! Thanks!

[@cusnaez]

Best introduction to Clojure ever!

[@RogerBarraud]

Not really - See Rich Hickey's YT vids for even better intro / intermediate / advanced coverage! :-)

[@seyiakadri]

Great. Clojure is it.

[@kenzo0622]

This is a great talk. Thanks!

[@RogerBarraud]

Great talk. Good mix of conceptual and concrete.

[@АйбатАманбайұлы]

Best intro to Clojure

[@artist6000ish]

at 50:41, Rich cut Brian off, but Brian's question was about the mutable data structures in Java and .NET. It's unfortunate because Rich response didn't make sense without that qualification where he says "you don't use them"

[@elgireth]

Great stuff! Evolving reference feels indeed like a dual of Observables/Streams. And swap is like scan in streams. Though scan takes the latest value & the state built only in that stream to produce a new value where swap can take any other state too. How would a transaction look like on e.g. 2 observables/streams?

[@DanielBeecham]

This was great, thanks.

[@laurelsporter]

Great to see something other than one-way talks. Thank you, Algorithm. Around 45 min...x86 has a number of compare and exchange instructions, and have retained that terminology for it for many years, as they've added more of them. Windows' library writers probably derived their terms from Intel's hardware level vocabulary.

[@captaincaption]

The algorithm pulls out some diamonds from the rough in a whole for sure. And that's why I continue to use KZbin.

[@hertzbergny]

love how nerdy as fuck this is

[@creativefeather2968]

I think you're conflating nerdy discussion and meaningful discussion, lol. I'm just learning clojure and this helped me understand the language in a much more meaningful way than the documentation on the website has so far. I'll give you though, if you're learning or know clojure, you might be a nerd :)

[@Kenbomp]

Nice. Swap reminds of the small talk becomes command.

[@ycombine1053]

When writing concurrent programs in your current language is so hard that you write your own Lisp lol.

[@laurelsporter]

After you've gotten used to Erlang or Elixir, it's not much of a stretch, and Erlang was definitely an inspiration for Clojure. That'll really change how you think about concurrency and parallelism, being used to more common languages. But, even with the niceties of Elixir, the BEAM (Erlang's runtime/VM) just doesn't lend itself to general purpose programming.

[@eugenemosh3658]

Thanks!

[@andrw_]

The Bob Ross of programming meets the cowboy Tom Hanks

[@valentinzambelli9930]

Even if you are Rich Hickey you still have to whiteboard code in interviews...

[@adrbaz]

😂

[@mhameedmmd]

my life is changed now !!!

[@Evan490BC]

(greatp (watch 'Rich 'Brian)) ; => T

[@UberOcelot]

This was like an hour long mental message, does it get better than this?

[@RahulGaurh4x]

man oh man ...if I could be a centage of programmer mister rich is

[@abhinavomprakash4884]

When the creator of clojure says multi threading in java is complicated.....

[@MinNyeAccount]

I understand nothing of what they are saying.. but i have seen the entire video.. ??

[@ericlubisse8461]

+MinNyeAccount mmm...how did you make it to the end of the video? Anyway, have a look at this www.braveclojure.com/

[@micheldibjorge7517]

Relax it is normal, study more about computer science and come back in a couple of years

[@Simon-xi8tb]

Rich Brickey and Brian Hickman

[@jungjunk1662]

Why is the guy wearing a 🎩 inside?

[@willmcpherson2]

The persistent data structures are really cool but man I would not enjoy implementing that

[@trwd3000]

These guys should dress more like the rock stars they are.

[@RogerBarraud]

I think you'll find they *did* :-)

[@MIIIG]

He use worm brackets )))

[@SonOfBohl]

MUH MONADS

[@alehatsman8550]

Hello guys, I am from 2018 and the most popular language in the World is JavaScript.

[@mrsozekaiser9299]

:))

[@christgar64]

I am from 2020 and JS is still very popular but equally hated.

[@n30v4]

Im from 2021 and JS is still… await … what??? Resolve that now! What do you mean I’m rejected.. ~shooting in background~ Hello I’m from Microsoft. .NET is coming. And can’t be stopped now. Since Billy the swag Gates is divorced we are concentrating on a younger audience.

[@PatternShift]

I am from 2023! And JavaScript keeps getting more popular despite being bad, but it's ok, Microsoft is slowly taking over the language and ecosystem and fixing the fact that it's not C# by turning it into C#, one TypeScript feature at a time.

[@utkukaratas]

2024 - JS and his crossdressing persona TS doesn’t seem to have lost steam at all. There’re even competing runtimes for backend use other than Node - Deno, Bun. The whole ecosystem of its underlying tools are slowly being rewritten in Rust.