disclojure: all things clojure

Today in the Intertweets (Sept 8th Ed)

tbatchelli — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 07:41:57 +0000

just wrote a clojure autodoc mojo for the clojure-maven-plugin. would be cool to get it integrated. (here, via @puredanger) — Autodoc is cool. Maven is cool too. Being able to use both at the same time? Cooler.
Best In Class – The tour (here, via @planetclojure) — A walkthrough the Clojure code behind the code that powers the blog Best In Class
loves this picture (here, via @craigandera) — Pure awesomeness!
ZeroMQ and Clojure, a brief introduction (here, via @antoniogarrote) — “What would BSD sockets look like if they were to be designed today? That’s the question ZeroMQ designers seem to be trying to answer when they started working in the project.” A great introduction to ZeroMQ and a detailed tutorial to get it up and running with Clojure.

Today in the Intertweets (Sept 7th Ed)

tbatchelli — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 07:19:46 +0000

Made a #Clojure interface for the Google Ai Challenge—have yet to test it, but it’s up (here, via @ihodes) — Ready to write your bot to compete in Google’s AI Challenge? It’s Planet Wars!
- You can now participate (well, once it’s set up server-side, too) in the Planet-Wars Google AI contest with #Clojure (here, via @ihodes)
Want to learn idiomatic #clojure? Tie one hand behind your back: no recur, no lazy-seq. (or attend next #conjlabs http://conj-labs.eu/ ;-)) (via @cgrand) — Hey, did you know that you can write the word ‘database’ with just your left hand? Which hand will you guys tie on the back of your students during the training sessions? Seriously, if you are in Europe during Oct 26th to 28th and want to learn from the pros, you should consider conj-labs.
Been working on a design for a new hosted/remote Clojure REPL impl. Input very welcome. Implementation is on this week. (here, via @cemerick) — This is a proposal to unify remote access to the Clojure REPL, since currently each IDE uses its own proprietary methods. This document proposes a set of requirements for this unified access, and it is awaiting your feedback!
Web recipes in #clojure by @abedra (here, via @stuartsierra) — “This is a collection of clojure projects focused on making some sense out of web development on clojure.” Tools for this trade? Ring + Compojure + Hiccup + Sandbar.
Know any Clojure users in Charleston, SC? I’m organizing an inaugural meetup #clojure (via @smashthepast) — I hope this shootout helps!
Released Leiningen 1.3.1 while in line to see Gibson. Seems fitting. Will send an announcement to the Clojure list once the event’s over. (via @technomancy) — It does seem fitting.

Today in the Intertweets (Sept 6th Ed)

tbatchelli — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 07:36:43 +0000

An Exercise in Laziness and Futility • a fun #Clojure story, happens in #CommonLisp too—someone already thought of that (here, via @xampl) — How to write lazy functions in Clojure by creating a lazy version of reduce.
Hit an “Ooh, really? Awesome!” moment in the Clojure book. Sweet. (via @kevinclark) — It happens…
Rich Hickey will be presenting to the Bay Area #Clojure User Group on September 20th. Nice! (here, via @brentonashworth) — Seats are limited, so if you plan to attend make sure you RSVP.
#clojure users! Don’t forget the users map! (here, via @kotarak) — That’s right! This is a map of all the clojurians. If you aren’t there yet, go ahead and add yourself (unless you work for Wikileaks that is).

This weekend in the Intertweets (Sept 5th Ed)

tbatchelli — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 07:12:29 +0000

Using flash messages with Ring 0.2.5/Compojure 0.4.1 (here, via @kumarshantanu) — In case you were wondering…
Second part of my tutorial on #clojure web dev with compojure: now with ajax! (here, via @mikaelsundberg) — Here is part 1
Implementing actors in Clojure (here, via @antoniogarrote) — Jobim, an actors library built on top of RabbitMQ and Zookeeper for Clojure, uses Matchure and provides some sort of hierarchical process structure for added Erlangliness. This article describes in detail how the system works. Very interesting WIP.
Registration is open for #clojureconj at http://clojure-conj.org/ (via @clojure_conj) — If you plan to go, register now as seating is quite limited! I will be there, so come and say Hi! :)
Run the GWT compiler with lein-gwt in #clojure / #gwt hybrid projects (here, via @teropa) — If you’re crazy enough to use the Google Web Toolkit framework and tool chain with Clojure, then you might be interested in this plugin for Leiningen.
A* in Clojure (here, via @jorgetavares) — Need to find the best path between two nodes in a graph? Need to do it fast and efficiently? Then A* is your algorithm. No need to write it though, since Christophe Grand (@cgrand) wrote it for you.
Clojure Box 1.2 an all-in-one installer 4 #Clojure on Windows inspired by Lispbox (here, via @carlosqt) — Now it comes with Clojure 1.2. Instructions: 1) Install. 2) Launch. 3) Hack in the REPL!
Lein-run by @sids is awesome (deserves 0.1 release) – you can run #clojure web apps from command line (here, via @kumarshantanu) — It comes really handy when developing webapps in Clojure, but it is also useful for any need to fire off a long running Clojure process from the command line.
Learn and Use the Standard Library (here, via @planetclojure) — You should not try to reinvent the wheel, first look at clojure.contrib.wheel … you might just find a faster wheel than you could ever build…
Just finished a blog post revealing the secrets of monad fu, in #clojure. (here, via @drcabana) –Let’s see if I finally get this whole monadic thing… Is there any monad pill that I can swallow?!?

Today in the Intertweets (Sept 2nd Ed)

tbatchelli — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 07:57:56 +0000

Programming Challenge for Newbies in #Clojure and #Python too? Share your thoughts (here, via @IndianGuru) — RubyLearning has been holding monthly Ruby programming challenges for newbies. They’re thinking about expanding them to Clojure and Python too.
John Rose on JVM Summit is all about moving towards a functional paradigm; it seems #clojure’s guiding the way (here, via @pedroteixeira) — didn’t I say those talks were full of gold?!
cfmljure – calling #clojure from #coldfusion – is available to play (here, via @seancofrield) — ColdFusion is a veteran of the web scripting languages/frameworks. Now you can finally do cool stuff with it ;)

Today in the Intertweets (Sept 1st Ed)

tbatchelli — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 07:01:32 +0000

Editing trees in #clojure with clojure.zip (here, via @marick) — clojure.zip is a functional traverse and modify (well, create modified copies of) trees. How to use this library is not immediately obvious, and this article explains how to use them.
The Joy of Clojure: Thinking the Clojure Way – Book Review (here, via @ibmkhd) — “reading “Joy of Clojure” might actually require the reader to use a dictionary, as the lexical range used by the authors is broad and might be a barrier”. I disagree, english is my third language and I didn’t need a dictionary. I even got some of the jokes! This is a horribly shallow review, actually.
Did you know about linear search in #clojure? (here, via @kotarak) — Short article explaining how ‘contains?’ works (which seems to confuse a lot of people) and how ’some’ is a very useful higher-level function for finding elements in a sequence.
“at the moment we believe #fsharp and #clojure to be better suited to most organisations for assessing than #scala” (here, via @ptrelford) — Technology Radar is an advisory publication by the IT consultancy ThoughtWorks that periodically reviews new technologies and assesses their levels of maturity and desirability for IT customers. Well, in this issue they are continuing to favor Clojure over Scala… aaaand now it is time to run for cover ;)

Today in the Intertweets (Aug 31st Ed)

tbatchelli — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 07:51:28 +0000

Protocols are faster than Clojure multimethods. Can be as fast as direct func calls in fact and inlined by hotspot (via @chouser) — This is an important fact.
Clojure or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Parentheses (here, via @nathanmarz) — This is an article that explains one of the main differences between Lisps and other mainstream languages: the ability to extend the the language –even create your own mini-languages– to fit your purposes from within the host language itself and without adding any accidental complexity to the system.. Most other languages add accidental complexity when trying to do so.
Sweet, a Clojure Ring adapter for Mongrel2 by mikejs (here, via @zedshaw) — This allows you to run Ring/Compojure applications inside Mongrel2, a cool new language agnostic web server.

Today in the Intertweets (Aug 30th Ed)

tbatchelli — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 05:33:28 +0000

In which the lessons of ZZ Top are applied to the marketplace (here, via @planetclojure) — Tangentially related to Clojure, except that the author of the article built Leningen for us, and along the way he did something bad… and nationwide. A good read about why a hacker sometimes needs to assert her/his opinion in the code.
Clojure and SQL (here, via @cfbloggers) — Short tutorial on getting some SQL working with Clojure.

This weekend in the Intertweets (Aug 29th Ed)

tbatchelli — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 07:40:35 +0000

stumbling towards the clojure api (a code example using de maybe monad and null safe operator .?.) (here, via @jneira) — The many ways to deal with functions that can return a null value.
I put together a small example of how to use the #websocket support in #aleph using #clojure (here, via @maclausen) — Don’t you worry, you won’t be reading much code as the code in this example is very succinct.
Random thoughts on Clojure Protocols (here, via @debasishg) — This is a very informative article about what protocols in clojure are and are not, the latter part (what protocols are not) being most informative for all of you programming polyglots.
Porting #clojure ants concurrency demo to #haskell (here, via @wmacgyver) — Here is a follow-up post, “Speeding up the Ants program” which contains some interesting profiling info.
lein-hadoop is now available on clojars.org. Contributions welcome! (here, via @xefyr) — A leiningen plugin that lets you create hadoop-compatible jar files.
The only real problem I have with Clojure is that after learning it, you never want to program in another language again (via @mauritsrijk) — I know, it happens…
Beware Choosing the Most Complex Tool for the Job (here, via @stuartsierra) — A word of caution for those too eager to use the new 1.2 features (protocols, records) that could make your programs more complex and less flexible.
static – static blog generator in #clojure (here, vi a@maclausen) — Nurullah Akkaya moved his blog away from Compojure and into the static world by using only hiccup. The code is here.

Today in the Intertweets (Aug 26th Ed)

tbatchelli — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 07:21:36 +0000

How we Deploy our Clojure App (here, via @kyleburton) — Automatically deploy a clojure webapp using Chef.
Reusable method implementations for deftypes (here, via @planetclojure) — The new types in clojure 1.2 are very powerful, both in terms of their flexibility and their performance. Deftype allows you to create lean java classes from clojure. Records are deftypes extended to become first-class clojure citizens (e.g. map support, metadata support, etc…) Currently there is no support for reusing method implementations in deftypes (i.e. reuse map support from records.) This article introduces the library methods-a-la-carte that allows you to do just that.
Get @chrishouser’s top-selling “The Joy of Clojure” for 40% off using code s140 (until Sept 1) (here, via @fogus)
Used my lunch break to update the Trammel docs with the new syntax (here, via @fogus) — Trammel is a contracts programming library for Clojure that is WIP. Lately the syntax has changed quite a bit and this article introduces this new syntax.
Follow-up to yesterday’s post with some examples on using #zeromq to connect #clojure to #ruby! (here, via @trydionel) — This is a follow-up to this article showing how to connect to zeromq from Clojure, and it shows how to get Clojure and Ruby talking.

Today in the Intertweets (Aug 25th Ed)

tbatchelli — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 05:37:47 +0000

#Compojure Demystified with an example – Part 4 (here, via @sivajag) — Here are part 1, 2 and 3. This is a series about creating webapps with Compojure and Clojure.
Looks like I can improve the Clojure section of DSLs In Action with the new Protocols introduced in 1.2. Non invasive abstractions FTW (via @debasishg) — Those protocols sure are neat…
I joined Los Angeles Clojure Users Group on Meetup (here, via @nickmain_ ) — So there, there is a LA Clojure group now.
Wrote up the details on getting #zeromq working with #clojure on #osx (here, via @trydionel) — ZeroMQ is a (very fast) messaging library, meant to be used programmatically, as opposed to being a shrink-wrap solution. Making it work with Clojure is not a walk in the park. This article might help if you want to do that on OSX.

Today in the Intertweets (Aug 24th Ed)

tbatchelli — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 07:01:43 +0000

Scala classes in clojure (here, via @ScalaAtSO) — That’s right: make love, not war. It’s refreshing to see Scala and Clojure in the same sentence without a ‘vs.’ in between.
Are github-hosted repos the maven gateway drug for my Clojure brethren? Sorry guys: it’s a fact of life on the JVM.(here, via @cemerick) — Yes, it is a fact of life that your project will be broken into a few modules that might evolve concurrently, and you’ll have to manage their dependencies. This article is actually only tangentially related to Clojure, as it applies to Java itself and all the other JVM-based languages. The fact of life is that you will need to setup a Maven repository which, as the article proposes, can be done without adding much infrastructure overhead.

Today in the Intertweets (Aug 23rd Ed)

tbatchelli — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 07:39:22 +0000

Alle drei Teile unserer Clojure-Serie im JavaSPEKTRUM sind mittlerweile online (here, via @stilkov) — For the German speakers (well, readers would be fine too!), here are the three parts of a series of articles on Clojure for JavaSPEKTRUM (Overview, Data Types and Java Integration, and Concurrency).
Version 0.6 of the Grails Clojure plugin utilizes Clojure 1.2.0 (here, via @jeffscottbrown) — Grails is a Groovy-based web development framework. This plugin lets you use clojure from within the framework, which makes it very easy to develop webapps and use Clojure in the backend.
Securing #Clojure web applications with Sandbar – Part 2. Form-based authentication and channel security (here, via @brentonashworth) — Sandbar is a library intended to work on top of Compojure/Ring and that simplifies writing web applications.
Basic authentication for ring (and compojure etc.) (here, via @planetclojure) — Basic Authentication, but this time without Sandbar ;)
A micro-manual for LISP Implemented in C (here, via @planetclojure) — Ok, bear with me here. Nurullah has a free weekend, and what do you normally do with a free weekend? Well, it turns out he decides to write a LISP in C. So he writes it, and it works. Let me ask here, how many of you pull this kind of software over the weekends?!? I don’t. I would if I could though!
Are we to static for a dynamic world? (here, via @kotarak) — The pros and cons of extending records statically or dynamically (speed vs. flexibility). Good insight, you might want to tread this, since these features are new to Clojure 1.2.0

This weekend in the intertweets (Aug 22nd Ed)

tbatchelli — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 07:33:56 +0000

32 days after Leiningen 1.2.0: Leiningen 1.3.0 is released (here, via @technomancy) — Multiple connections to the same REPL, task chaining, user-level plugins, and shell script launchers for your jar files.
Clojure, concurrency and silver bullets (here, via @cbeust) — Cedric Beust, the author of amongst other things TestNG, comments on Bob Martin’s article”Why Clojure?” and argues that clojure is no silver bullet when it comes to concurrency, arguing that straight Java with the Concurrent library is better.
Modularization of #clojure contrib is complete; lib authors please read (here, via @stuartsierra) — This will allow authors to provide updates to each library in clojure.contrib much faster than before.
There are two kind of databases, those that can do map-reduce queries in Clojure on those that don’t (here, via @old_sound) — The author attempts to using Clojure to perform the computations related to ma-preduce in Riak. Note that you can already do this in CouchDB via clutch.
rolled the SIGHUP config reloading business for #clojure into a library (here, via @alandipert) — “Reload configuration files in Clojure daemons when the JVM receives a SIGHUP. Configuration files are Clojure code, and can contain any Clojure data structures”. Un*x only.
any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from #clojure (via @alandipert) — And with this, somebody in the Internet will call you a ‘fanboy’.
A Clojurist’s Guide to Java (here, via @ihodes) — From the article: “it should serve as a “Getting Started with Java from Clojure” guide that will hopefully enable you to more easily navigate the Java documentation and use Java in your Clojure projects when the need arises”
Clojure in Python (here, via @HNTweets) — What do you do if Clojure takes to long to start (or re-start) when hosted in Google App Engine? Rewrite Clojure in Python, of course, since Python starts way faster!
Clojure programmers don’t write their apps in Clojure. They write the language that they use to write their apps in Clojure. (via @fogus) — I think it should read “Good Clojure programmers…”, my code doesn’t quite look like that (yet)
equiv branch has been merged to #clojure master branch. primitive args have arrived.(here, via @wmacgyver) — Get ready to see your Clojure code fly even faster!

Today in the Intertweets (Aug 19th Ed)

tbatchelli — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 04:47:17 +0000

Eventful day today :)

Clojure 1.2 is out, with a bunch of new features that many bloggers have already covered one way or another and that I’ll try to compile in a single post one of these days. For a good overview of the new features, check this presentation by @fogus. Here is the detailed list of new features and all other changes.

And as if there were not enough good news in the Clojure front today, there is also confirmation that there will be a Clojure conference this year. Named clojure-conj, It will take place in Durham, North Carolina (that’s in the USA) on October 22nd and 23rd. If you are planning to go, please sign-up so they know how many attendees to plan for. I will be going, so I hope you meet you all there.

But other things happened today. Here is the list:

Really digging @bradfordcross’s clojure Infer ML library; think *nix utils & pipes for ML tasks. (here, via @rjurney) — This is WIP, but very promising. A library that lets you build your own Machine Learning system by hooking well-known — and not-so-well-known — learning algorithms. The beauty of the system is that it makes it very easy to connect algorithms.
Case-insensitive filesystems vs AOT-compiled Clojure (here, via @cemerick) — A word of warning for those who compile Clojure code on file systems that are case-insensitive (OS X, I am looking at you!). Spoiler: if you created two functions, named MY-function and my-function, the compiler will write one over the other.
Hacker News should be renamed to Clojure News (via @vsedach) — That’s because Clojure rocks.
I hate to overshadow the #clojure 1.2 release, but I’ve released #midje 0.4.0 (features shown at #agile2010)(here, via @marick) — Midje is a powerful testing framework for Clojure with emphasis in mocks, written by Brian Marick. This new version features a sweetened interface. Here is a heavily commented example of this new sweet interface (sweet indeed)

Today in the Intertweets (Aug 18th Ed)

tbatchelli — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 05:58:08 +0000

Conj Labs goes to Frankfurt 26-28/10! Learn #clojure with @LauJensen and me (here, via @cgrand) — In Europe? You can also lean from the pros.
Learning to switch from (a) common #lisp to idiomatic #clojure (here, via @edgargoncalves) — This is a good article to show to a lisper that wonders what people mean when they talk about “idiomatic clojure”.It walks the reader through the process of transforming a very Common-lispy function to a more idiomatic Clojure one.
Why Clojure? (here, via @unclebobmartin) — Bob Martin has been touting Clojure for a while, sometime very publicly like in the last RailsConf keynote. In this article he explains his reasons for choosing Clojure, both over imperative languages and over other functional languages. Bob has been doing an excellent job and convincing large numbers of developers to give a try to Functional Programming in general and Clojure in particular. (I registered more than 200 retweets for his tweet, for example.)
Micro languages in Clojure – part 2 (here, via @wilig) — More on writing DSLs in Clojure. In the previous article the author introduced to a full DSL for generating SQL queries. This new installment covers some new features for this DSL: variable binding and nesting of expressions.
Arkham, a clojure interpreter (here, via @hiredman_) — “lisp interpreter with clojure like semantics”. Funny how instead of ‘eval’, you have ‘evil’ :)

Today in the Intertweets (Aug 17th Ed)

tbatchelli — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 07:44:12 +0000

Dear Clojure fans: Leiningen 1.3.0 has a release candidate (here, via @technomancy) — Very useful new features: shell wrapping of your app, chaining of tasks (finally!), etc..
[JavaOne 2010] After “Java and HTML5″, the session “Scala and Clojure” is also canceled. (via @Harok_Seb) — Is that true? Looks like it :(
Strange Loop speaker interview: Chris Houser (here, via @strangeloop_stl)
Implemented a small command line tool to help me remember stuff during the day (here, via @tormaroe) — Ah! I was looking for something like this :)
Visualising the Wikileak’s war logs using Clojure (here, via @planetclojure) — As usual Nurullah writes a very creative post, showing some ways to aggregate the data from the US war logs in Afghanistan with Clojure and Incanter.

Today in the Intertweets (Aug. 16th Ed)

tbatchelli — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 07:41:05 +0000

You guys know how to get yourselves busy over weekend, don’t you? Gosh! Here we go..

Assoc and Clojure’s PersistentHashMap: part ii (here, via @planetclojure) — An in-depth look at how ‘assoc’ works on persistent data structures (with nice graphs and Java code!)
“The past is immutable” An early #Clojure in Lisp (here, via @fogus) — Things I learned Today: Clojure was first written in Common Lisp!
#Clojure Protocols and the Expression Problem (here, via @brentonashworth) — On how the new ‘protocols’ can be used to avoid the Expression Problem (e.g. adding functionality to library code that we don’t have control for).
New post, new project: Clojure Workers and Large Scale HTTP Fetching. (here, via @bradfordcross) — This article introduces work, a generalized worker pool for clojure. The goal is to be able to start multiple tasks to be executed in parallel while controlling the number of threads created and also their lifecycle since, in the opinion of the author, the current parallelization features of Clojure don’t offer enough control. It also introduces clj-http…
on clj-http. A new http client for clojure (here, via @bradfordcross) — Mark MacGranaghan introduces his new creation: clj-http, that is a new HTTP client with an interface inspired on Ring, which ensures extreme simplicity and extensibility.
Most of learning #clojure is unlearning narrow ways of thinking about programming (via @nathanmarz)
weekend hacking: a LOGO interpreter built with clojure + app engine + HTML canvas + parsec envy (here, via @antoniogarrote) — OK, I don’t know where to start with this, but let me try: a LOGO interpreter in the cloud, backed by Clojure on Google App Engine, with no need of browser plugins (e.g. Flash), that lets you share your designs, all done in a weekend… How long are you weekends Antonio?… oh, and the code is on Github to boot!

This weekend in the Intertweets (Aug. 15th Ed)

tbatchelli — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 07:22:08 +0000

New blog post on the #clojure cycle function (here, via @objcmdo) — This is a good article to learn about the power of lazy sequences.
Clojure 1.2 RC3 is out. (here, via @stuarthalloway) — That was fast! Only some fixes, no new features.
Just noticed joy of clojure is Manning’s best selling MEAP currently, awesome work @fogus & @chrishouser (via @westernwizard) — Kudos!
Micro languages in Clojure via macros and let. (here, via @wilig) — This article walks the reader through the process of creating a micro-language for interacting with SQL databases with the power of macros and the ‘let’ statement. A must read IMHO; it is very approachable, informative and let’s face it, everybody needs to write a micro-language in their lifetime.
Follow up to yesterdays article on #clojure protocols. Discuss how to have a default implementation. (here, via @fulldisclojure) — A method to provide a default implementation for some or all members in of a protocol.
a strategy game developed using #clojure (here, via @wmacgyver) — There are also some notes from the author about his experience writing games in Clojure; overall he is happy with the level of concurrency, being able to work at a high level and interact with Java, but would love to see primitive support (coming), being able to reduce memory allocations, and maybe a two-phase compilation to deal better with circular references.
New REPL step debugger for #clojure (here, via @puredanger) — Lambdebug is an interesting project that aims at providing a debugger for clojure. Very promising, but it’s WIP and lacks key feautres (like support for loop/recur).
Awesome new #clojure tool (here, via @heinz_gies) — And this tool is an auto-completion library for Emacs, that also shows the documentation along with the currently selected completion option.
@brweber2 La Clojure plugin for IntelliJ IDEA is now under reworking on Clojure, so it’s gonna take a while (via @ilyasergey) — :(, but if this means that the new plugin will be better since it will be coded in Clojure, then :)
#clojure .net clr mostly up to 1.2RC3 now. (here, via @wmacgyver) — That’ll come handy should Oracle decide to bury the JVM inside their database (joking).
The hardest part about #clojure is coming up with names for all the beautiful abstractions you magically end up with. (via @_pmh_) — And this is the tweet of the week.
www.gettingclojure.com, a wiki for Clojure beginners — This comes straight form the mailing list. This site has a wiki and forums, devoted to provide guidance and support for clojure newcomers.

Today in the Intertweets (Aug. 11th Ed)

tbatchelli — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 07:32:29 +0000

@weakreference La Clojure plugin update is coming. Thanks for your patience and stay tuned! (via @weakreference) — This is in reference to the question about the status of La Clojure plugin for IntelliJ IDEA.
Racket vs Clojure (it’s all about the data structures) (here, via @kicauan) — A long time Racket (scheme) programmer looks at Clojure and finds that the data structures provided, along with the ability to access all of them via the ’sequence’ abstraction, are a very significant advantage. The author also provides some views on pros/cons of Clojure for real-world programming.
Just posted an example of code reuse with #clojure protocols (here, via @fulldisclojure) — If you were wondering how you could have inheritance with Clojure and its ‘protocol’ feature, here is your answer. A very good post if you come from OO languages and think that Clojure doesn’t provide good enough tools for code reuse.
Rich Hickey’s #clojure “short” todo list: cinc, better method inference, letmacro, JSR 292, modularity, #android … (here, via @wmacgyver) — … pods, parallelism, primitives, scopes… it looks like Rich is getting himself and the clojure/core guys busy these days!
At “0 to Clojure in 90 minutes” session by @trptcolin First foray into #clojure. #agile2010 (via @srayhan) — More clojure at Agile 2010.

Today in the Intertweets (Aug. 10th Ed)

tbatchelli — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 07:55:15 +0000

Securing #Clojure web applications with Sandbar. The first of a four part series (here, via @brentonashworth) — Sandbar is library that provides some high-level abstractions to Compojure and/or Ring. In this article it explains how this library can help secure your web app.
TJoC has featured in top 3 at HackerNewsers (here, via @kumarshantanu) — At the time of writing this, TJoC was at position #4, but still!
Monkeying with Clojure’s defmethod Macro (here, via @fogus) — I don’t really know how to summarize this one… I need more coffee, but it is late at night.
I posit that “yoink” is better name for clojure.core/seq (which is confusable with seq? and sequence) (via @puredanger) — I second the petition. I have been bit by this one too many times!
Creating Sparse Tabular Data With Clojure (here, via @samnewman) — How to automatically create a sparse table from data entries that might have arbitrary columns (i.e. the possible columns are not known)
#clojure in action meap update, ch11 discuss using clojure with various MQs (here, via @wmacgyver)
GitHub stats with Incanter (here, via @citizen428) — Grab the languages data from GitHub, Incanter and some skills, and plot many interesting graphs on programming language usage by GitHub projects. Good also as an introduction to Incanter.

Today in the Intertweets (Aug. 9th Ed)

tbatchelli — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 07:57:04 +0000

Clojure t-shirt (here, via @Jacolyte) — Awesome makeshift clojure t-shirt.
Rich Hickey and Joe Pamer – Clojure and F# at the Emerging Languages Camp (here, via @ch9) — Rich Hickey discusses Clojure and F# with the author of the latter. Very interesting interview but it is very clear that both authors love their own language the most.
Robert Martin talk on clojure, and he uses IntelliJ IDEA (Agile 2010) (here, via @spav5) — Robert Martin keeps evangelizing the world with his new gospel of Clojure, by giving a 2.5 hour kata to the attendees of Agile 2010.

This weekend in the Intertweets (Aug. 8th Ed)

tbatchelli — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 06:14:17 +0000

Good Clojure news site (here, via @tim_coder) — yet another way of getting your news about Clojure. This link summarizes the links posted on twitter under the #clojure tag.
#Cake (#Clojure #Rake) looks great, solves local dependencies problem, but it doesn’t work on windows (here, via @qertoip) — Cake is a rake-inspired build tool for Clojure that is compatible also with leiningen projects. It makes it very easy to define your own tasks, extend existing ones and parse command-line parameters. It also provides a persistent JVM so you can run command after command without the need to fire-up a new JVM (and wait for it to start).
Micro-interview about Clojure, Scala, and ill-will. MartinOdersky take(5) toList (here, via @fogus) — Martin says Scala and Clojure are BFF
“Measure your OODA loop in all the languages you know. See which one cycles fastest…that’s your favorite language.” (here, via @sfioritto) — OODA stands for Observe, Orient, Decide and Act and in this context it refers to the time it takes from realizing that your program has a bug to the time it takes to find it and fixit. The article makes reference to how Lisp on a Symbolics machine would have an extremely short OODA, and thus it was very productive.
Writing a Parser (for a markup language): Theory & Practice (here, via planetclojure) — This is a question on Stack Overflow about the existing tools to write a parser in Clojure. All the answers are pretty interesting.
#clojure 1.2 RC2 is out (here, via @stuarthalloway) — This is some speedy development!
Some usefull information about Clojure servers (here, via @pepijndevos) — The different options today to write an evented HTTP server in Clojure.
Exploring Riak with Clojure (here, via @mmcgrana) — Riak is a powerful distributed datastore built by Basho. It can scale massively while keeping some good properties. This tutorial walks you through the steps to write a simple application that uses Riak for storage.

Today in the Intertweets (Augus 5th Ed)

tbatchelli — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 07:42:58 +0000

New post on building REST APIs for Clojure web apps (here, via @mmcgrana) — Step by step creation of JSON-based RESTful web services in Clojure using Compojure and clj-json.
Joy of #Clojure — In the Books! updated ToC at http://joyofclojure.com (here, via @fogus) — The book “The Joy of Clojure” is now ready for editorial work, as the bulk of the writing it is done. Congratulations! Can’t wait to have a hard copy one of these days; before November maybe?. There has been some chapter reorganization and a new and promising chapter containing an annotated bibliography that will surely will help deplete our collective bank accounts.
Send Growl notifications from #Clojure. Too much work for such a simple thing (here, via @brentonashworth) — That is one fun project. It should to be adopted by tools like Cascalog so that they can tell you when your map/reduce job is done.

Today in the Intertweets (August 4th Ed)

tbatchelli — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 07:59:22 +0000

Clojure for Beginners Course – 2nd Batch Announced (here, via @L2Program) — The first (online) course by rubylearning.org was a success, and now there is a new batch coming. The course is $5 that will be donated in full to the Clojure project to fund its development.
Great Clojure quote from Brenton Ashworth (here, via @pdrummond) — That’s from a recent interview that @fogus did of Brenton. I am copying the quote here in full: “I’m now convinced that choosing a language based on how easy it is to read or write is a very bad idea. What if we chose musical instruments based on how easy they are to play? Everyone would playing kazoos. You can’t think deeply about music if all you know is a kazoo. Skill at reading and writing code is learned. We should choose languages based on how accurately they allow us to think about the problems we are trying to solve”
http://github.com/qertoip/istext is a #java library to reliably recognize #text files and #binary files; implemented in #clojure (here, via quertoip)

Today in the Intertweets (August 3rd Ed)

tbatchelli — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 07:30:35 +0000

Enhancing Clojure’s case to evaluate dispatch values (here, via @cemerick) — Clojure’s ‘case’ statement is a very fast switch on any compile-time literal. Very fast but with the downside that doesn’t evaluate the dispatch values at runtime, and this prevents to use Java variables as dispatch values, even if they’re static and final, or enums. Chas Emerick provides an enhanced case: ‘case+’ that handles said java values, still at compile time.
The latest in a series of micro-interviews focused on #Clojure: (take 5 (brenton-ashworth)) (here, via @fogus) — An interview to the author of deview, sandbar and other goodies.
Clojure simple threaded web server performance test (here, via @wilig) — This is a test of Clojure/compojure on jetty pulling data from a Postgres database. It turns out using a medium-sized connection pool gets the optimum performance.
Created a Scala RFE to replace the existing immutable.Vector implementation with my port from Clojure (here, via @djsipevak) — More cross-pollination between Clojure and Scala, or should I just say ‘pollination’? I am not aware of anything flowing from Scala to Clojure. Any tips on those?

Today in the Intertweets (August 2nd Ed)

tbatchelli — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 07:11:03 +0000

Specifying default slot values for defrecord classes in Clojure (here, via @cemerick) — What if you want to use a ‘record’ with a lot of slots for which you’d like to have default values? Right now there is no easy way of having default values in a defrecord. Chas Emerick provides a solution based on macros that create both the record itself and a factory for creating those records with the default values.
Did you know about the importance of being Earnest? (here, via @kotarak) — From the series “Did you know…?”, this article discusses the rules of thumb for ordering the arguments to your functions. Most important argument goes first? or it goes last?, and more importantly: why? It turns out it matters if you want to have your functions easily work with higher-order functions.
Testing inner functions in #clojure (here, via @marick) — Brian Marick is working on Midge, a mocking library for Clojure. This post a way in which one could test a function that is defined solely inside another function (by using metadata)

This weekend in the Intertweets (August 1st)

tbatchelli — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 07:15:27 +0000

Clojure 1.2 RC 1 (here, via @stuarthalloway) — The march to the final release of Clojure 1.2 continues. Very little changes (see changes.txt)
Read our post on Tweetable Code – or How to Read and Write Excel Sheets easily in #Clojure (here, via @ativedk) — A few weeks ago we reported about a tweet with the code to read some cells on an MS Excel spreadsheet with Docjure. This is a longer article explaining a little bit more about this tool.
Likelihood a user of one of these languages will be interested in Clojure (here, via @Alltop_Social) — If you are an Ada or Scala programer, you have 10 over 10 chances of being interested in Clojure. This is from crossing TIOBE data with a survey of 487 Clojurians stating what their prior language was.
No more complaining about Clojure boot times plz: new interactive shell task for the next Leiningen release. (here, via @technomancy) — Now you’ll be able to fire up lein and start typing commands in its own REPL, so no fire up a new VM at every command :)
#clojure form validation library #pour (here, via @maclausen) — From the library’s author: ”The purpose of the library is to validate form fields to specified constraints/validators and also to convert incoming fields, which are strings, to valid data in the application domain. In the future this library might be able to generate HTML or JavaScript code from form definitions.”
Looking for a place to learn and contribute to a widely-used Clojure project? Leiningen has low-hanging fruit (here, via @technomancy) — You could be the author of some of the new fancy features in Lein 1.3.0!
weekend hacking: Clojure HTML manipulation jquery style:
```
($ "http://news.ycombinator.com" a (external-links) (text))
```
(here, via @antoniogarrote) — Apricot-soup is a library that lets you access and manipulate the content of an HTML page via JQuery-style accessors.

Today in the Intertweets (July 29th Ed)

tbatchelli — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 07:23:20 +0000

Talked to @meporter about their #Clojure hosting last night…sounds like there is more news in this vein on the way from @contegix ! (via @puredanger) — This is related to the newly announced sponsorship of Clojure by Congegix.
add trace call to every function in a namespace … and remove it afterwords :) macroes (sic) (here, via @derartur) — A pair of functions to turn on and off function call logging on all the functions of a namespace.
Its tragic. My recent serious foray into Clojure and its functional/expressive greatness has totally broken my view of C based languages (via @markuskobler) — It happens :)

Today in the Intertweets (July 28th Ed)

tbatchelli — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 07:44:56 +0000

Example of #websocket based chat using #clojure and #jetty 7 by Chris McDevitt, in GitHub repo with deps (here, via @maclausen) — The example code in github is not new, but in its original form it was somewhat involved to get it to work. This blog post explains how to do just that.
We are sponsoring the Clojure Language Development Project (here, via @contegix) — From the press release it looks like the sponsoring will come in form of free hosting of servers. That’s great news!
Preannouncing Seph – Immutable Ioke/Clojure-like JVM language (here, via @hncomments) — Ola Bini writes a blog post detailing the design principles for his new language Seph, one of these principles being “Stealing is Good”. On this note he decides to ‘borrow’, amongst other things from other places, Clojure’s persistent data structures, the concurrency primitives (all of them) and the STM. I wonder if he will also start sporting a mullet? Jokes aside, Seph is based on Ioke, also from Ola. Seph is a homoiconic language that supports prototype-based OO. Since Ioke is very experimental, Seph is designed from the ground to be solid enough to be used in real applications. Seph was presented at Emerging Langs a week ago, and here are the slides.
Some ideas on how to write event-driven applications in #clojure using #aleph (here, via @ztellman) — Zach Tellman outlines his work in progress on a framework to develop event-driven applications to work with aleph, the non-blocking nettty-based web server. In this article the author introduces channels and pipelines as basic abstractions.
Couple more seats remaining for the Bay Area Clojure Bootcamp – learn #Clojure in a single day! (here, via @amitratore) — Learn Clojure from “Clojure in Action”’s author.