

The Clojure Community and Me - timf
http://blog.raynes.me/blog/2011/11/27/the-clojure-community-and-me/

======
ihodes
It's so true. Though I haven't been nearly as immersed in the Clojure
community as Anthony has, two of my last four jobs/internships have been in
Clojure (well, really, they hired me back). And I've loved it. I love the
language–it's the perfect balance of having fun, being precise, and getting
things (anything done). And I love the community. I've met so few Clojurists
in person, but the ones I have met have been amazing, and the ones who share
their stories and their wisdom via blog or IRC are just so damn intelligent
and kind.

More than anything, I _Get Things Done_ with Clojure, and the community helps
me do that. And from the feedback/re-hiring I get from my jobs, my employers
and the people they serve would agree.

Anthony: Keep at it man–you're great!

~~~
dmix
> two of my last four jobs/internships have been in Clojure

Was this in SF?

I've always used Clojure in my spare time with hobby projects. But I didn't
really see it as a professional option. I'm curious if thats changing now.

~~~
puredanger
Lots of people are using it professionally (we have a team of 9 doing
Clojure). More:
[http://dev.clojure.org/display/community/Clojure+Success+Sto...](http://dev.clojure.org/display/community/Clojure+Success+Stories)

------
wrs
When I started programming at about the same age, living in Tennessee in the
Pleistocene era, it took the concerted effort of several adults to even get me
access to a computer (actually to a punched card reader that connected to a
computer 100 miles away).

Now we take for granted that a smart kid in Alabama has his own personal
computer and can participate in a conversation with an expert community
anytime he wants. But it's amazing. And more importantly, the experts are so
incredibly supportive!

I guess this tradition goes back quite a ways, though...think of Ramanujan and
Hardy's mathematical relationship. Perhaps the key is a field that doesn't
require expensive equipment and the gatekeepers that go with that. Or does
this sort of thing happen nowadays in fields other than CS and math? Do
16-year-olds show up in economics or physics IRC channels and meet supportive
communities?

~~~
shantanubala
I think part of the reason why programming (and open source especially) allows
for very young people to participate easily is simple: bugs always exist. Open
source projects need a lot people -- not just A-grade programmers or
developers or computer scientists who've had decades of experience. They need
documentation, bug reports, patches, active forum/mailing list members, and
community organisers to be really successful. It's easy to get started just by
hanging out on forums, eventually noticing a bug, reporting the bug, learning
more about how the software works by understanding the bug, possibly trying to
fix the bug, etc. Over time, it isn't too hard to start making very
significant code or documentation contributions to a project.

In contrast, bug-testing Newton's Laws is a waste of time, and bug-testing
General Relativity requires a very large budget. Attempting to make a
meaningful contribution to physics is very difficult. The same can be said for
any pure science.

By definition, any pure science (natural or social) doesn't evolve quickly
enough to allow for quick-but-meaningful contributions because pure science is
about establishing a base of knowledge that builds directly on previous
knowledge. Without an understanding of the "previous knowledge," any newcomer
would be lost and wondering what's happening.

In contrast, applied science is often an orchestrated effort that involves
experts in different fields and contributions from different fields (e.g. your
software is as valuable as its support, and your interface ideas are as good
as the person implementing them). Prior knowledge isn't necessarily as
valuable as the ability to integrate ideas from different places or
collaborate with others.

Would you agree? I ask because part of me feels like I might be missing
something.

~~~
ihodes
I don't think you are correct, though you may be partially correct.

Perhaps many people get into programming by fixing bugs, but that never
appealed to me, and didn't really appeal to many people I know. It's good
advice for newbies trying to get better, I suppose, but it's not very
satisfying work (for many).

I got into programming by exploring my computer, websites, and slowly piecing
together an understanding of the machine. Eventually, I learned a programming
language to (mostly) proficiency. And then another. And then another. I still
don't feel like a pro, but I'm getting there. And I still hate fixing other
peoples' bugs, or my own.

~~~
p4bl0
Fixing bugs can be very enjoyable. I like watching House MD for the same
reasons. I feel like House's quest for a diagnosis given a subset of the
symptoms and his way of trying to provoke new symptoms to appear in order to
narrow the set of possible diagnosis, is just like trying to find the cause of
a bug. I don't know if other programmers watch House with this analogy in
mind, but I wouldn't be surprise if it's the case, the analogy is really
strong.

~~~
weavejester
Investigating bugs seems to me like the only part of computing that could
actually be considered a true science. You come up with theories about why a
system is going wrong, and then setup experiments based on those theories.

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mattdeboard
First job as a programmer -- Clojure backend dev? That's pretty awesome. The
joy you derive from the Clojure community comes across loud and clear in your
writing.

For anyone else who's been toying with the idea of looking at Clojure, it has,
IMO, the best tech community on the web. It seems like every maintainer for
every Clojure project I've ever looked at is at least idling in #clojure on
freenode 24/7.

------
dandrews
Anthony's Conj talk was pretty good all right. He looked completely at ease,
and has a great deadpan delivery when he tells a small joke. Knows his stuff.
He's grown in the last year, in lots of directions, and he is going to be a
Force. Watch and see.

(No pressure, raynes.)

And he's right about the community. Besides attracting some really bright
people, there isn't a lot of language chauvinism evident. (Well, the JRuby
folks took some shots, but it was all in fun. We love you guys, really.)

------
jes5199
I was born and raised in Alabama, too, and it terrifies me to think that there
are talented young people living there who have never left the state. The
culture there is so unlike the rest of the country, you can get a skewed view
of reality really easily. I mean, I have one.

~~~
SkyMarshal
From growing up in the Southeast, I think that's true to varying degrees all
over that region. The culture tends toward complacency in its worldview.

One of the most difficult things to do is to suspend your own beliefs, dogmas,
and preconceived notions about how the world is or should be, and completely
immerse yourself in adapt to another culture, be that culture a foreign
country, or just the other side of a big one like the US or Europe.

And that is particularly difficult for Americans who are taught from an early
to 'express yourself', rather than to perceive the world or any given
situation from the point of view of other people (as many foreign cultures,
especially Asian ones, do). It's even more difficult for Southern Americans,
who are, on top of all that, brought up with this relatively complacent world
view.

I know plenty of exceptions, but in general I agree with your assessment.

------
mark_l_watson
Great story. BTW, I used some bits of Anthony Grimes's TryClojure project on a
task for a customer - nice code and it saved me some development time - much
appreciated!

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stephth
_So what comes after Haskell? After I had used Haskell for a couple of months
and had got a few projects under my belt, it was time for a new step. I felt
that my next logical step was a Lisp._

This strikes me as an odd "next step". I don't code in Haskell or clojure, but
I've been eyeing both and the impression I got is that Haskell is harder to
grasp but more powerful once fully grasped (and nearly as portable as C++).
Sort of a superset of lisp. It seems that the next logical step after a couple
of months of Haskell is more Haskell. It evidently worked out great for him,
but I'd have liked to know why he switched to clojure.

~~~
Tuna-Fish
... Not really.

It's certainly more 'advanced' than any Lisp, including Clojure -- for the
past few years (or decades now...), Haskell has been where new academic
language research has been done. [1]

But that's just the problem. The fact is that Haskell is a research language
standardized by a committee of academics without much experience or interest
in real-world use. And it shows. Clojure, in contrast, is a language designed
for practical purposes after years of experience from real-world use, mostly
by one person, and while he's not as smart as the committee that designed
Haskell, he has something committees rarely ever have. _Taste._

In practice, I find Haskell beautiful. With Clojure I get things done.

[1] I'd be willing to say that today, if you are not fluent in Haskell, you
are strictly not competent to design a new programming language. For the exact
same reason you weren't competent to design new one without knowing Lisp from
about the '80s through '00s -- unless you know Haskell, you are passing by
most of the new inventions in programming languages done in past few decades
simply because you have never heard of them, and don't even know you are
missing them.

------
paddy_m
I choked up reading this. That kid is awesome and is going places.

------
nickik
> my mother would need to travel with me (for obvious reasons)

I dont get it, why?

~~~
Rayne
Travel in the United States is enough of a bother without doing so alone and
as a minor. Not something I wanted to deal with. Besides that, there are
apparently a lot of problems with liability when someone pays for a minor to
travel and it doesn't involve an adult.

~~~
nickik
Wow, typical America. I travelled threw europe with friends in that age and
its no problem and thats over borders.

I know that the people at americans airports think that everybody is a
terorrist or nazi but do the even think that if you travell within america?

~~~
cemerick
Chas Emerick here; I set up the fundraiser for Anthony in 2010. That rule was
mine, and it had nothing to do with "typical America" (whatever that means).

If something were to go wrong at any point, I wanted to make sure that someone
would be around that had Anthony's best interests at heart (could have been
any relative as far as I was concerned — I think Anthony's brother was also an
option at one point). Similarly, I made sure I talked to Anthony's mother by
phone before I started the fundraiser to make sure she was aware of what was
going on and had no objections.

Yeah, there may have been liability involved — for me, for Relevance, for
others, who knows — had something gone badly wrong. I'm not a lawyer, so I
don't know; but, having a parent or other adult relative along seemed like a
relatively simple way to address that unknown.

Fundamentally, this had nothing to do with laws or regulations or even
liability — it just seemed like the _right thing to do_.

~~~
nickik
Sorry, I didn't want to make fun of your effort and beeing on the safe side is
always good.

Why I said "typical America"

\- In Europe we have a view of America where you can get sued for anything.

\- Since 9/11 America has very strange laws about travling. (I had to fill out
more then one form asking me if im a Nazi or if I knew one)

~~~
michaelcampbell
Who required these forms? I have traveled many times within and without the US
and have never seen such a form, nor heard from anyone who has.

~~~
nickik
The Airlines. When you are at the Airport to pass on your luggage. The give
you some forms to fill out. Then you have to give these to somebody befor you
get to pass on your luggage. The nice lady then Ask you questions like: "Have
you every left your bags unwatched? (That was on the form allready)".

Made the line 2x slower then it had to be. Made me not wanting to go back to
Amerika anymore.

~~~
michaelcampbell
I remain unconvinced. Perhaps I'm being overly skeptical, but I'm just not
buying that any "Airlines" forms require that you out your political
affiliation, or knowledge of anyone IN a particular one.

------
AlexBaranosky
It's gotta be the hair.

------
dreamux
Raynes is amazing.

------
michaelty
Makes me wish I were young again.

------
dotBen
"The Clojure Community and _I_ "

~~~
Rayne
I was actually going for a reference to Marley & Me. Though, I'm not entirely
convinced that it is indisputably incorrect in this case. Even if it is, I
highly doubt that it is the worst mistake in my post.

