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#clojure-uk
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2016-11-18
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jonpither08:11:16

(defn brexit [] monad)

practicalli-johnny08:11:55

Hello @agile_geek for the ClojureX panel, how about the topic of "Guiding people into Clojure". There is a lot of scope for discussion on this topic

practicalli-johnny09:11:09

Sharing ideas on how to encourage and support others also helps our community grow our community

practicalli-johnny09:11:21

I've mentored a few people into Clojure this last year and it's been very interesting feedback. For example, I was a little surprised that not everyone likes http://braveclojure.com, atom editor is much preferred over LightTable and Nightcode by many, a lot of people want to learn Emacs because of Clojure. The most positive thing I've heard quite often is that Clojure is surprisingly easy to learn.

jasonbell09:11:26

<<how about the topic of "Guiding people into Clojure”>> @agile_geek @jr0cket happy to share my journey while I’m about at ClojureX

agile_geek09:11:53

@jasonbell How are this crisp morning? Good idea. I'm beginning to feel this is more a park bench than a panel and we circulate speakers and audience members in and out of the 'panel'. that way we can address a number of different topics and see what other topics this leads too. I just need some of the speakers to sign up to get the ball rolling so would be great if you can step up.

jasonbell09:11:13

@agile_geek I’m well thank you, NI is a wee bit snowy but the rain soon put a stop to that.

agile_geek09:11:14

Looks like you may be in for some wind over the weekend too? I'm glad I'm back up north at weekend as I think we'll miss most of it.

jasonbell09:11:52

No weather warnings so I’m not overly panicking. Worst snow usually lands in March.

agile_geek09:11:47

@otfrom morning Bruce 👋

mariusz_jachimowicz09:11:46

@jr0cket Indeed Clojure is surprisingly easy to learn. I was able to do first Onyx contribution after 3 months learning Clojure and doing small example project.

agile_geek09:11:39

@jr0cket @mariusz_jachimowicz I am always slightly taken aback that people say Clojure is easy to learn....it just shows how: a) slow I am at learning, b) set in my ways I am, as I found it quite challenging.

agile_geek09:11:55

I had to unlearn loads of stuff I was carrying around as baggage from 16 years of Java at the time plus 28 years of imperative programming!

jasonbell09:11:26

It took me a year to unlearn things so I could open my mind to functional ways. I see Clojure as a life lesson now.

thomas09:11:04

I have heard that Clojure is (or functional programming in general) is easier/simpler to pick up for programming novices. and more complicated for people who have done OO/imperative/mutable programming

thomas09:11:37

my wife for instance found x = x + 10 very hard to understand

mariusz_jachimowicz09:11:13

Yeah, the problem is generally that we often are married with language or paradigm.

thomas09:11:51

and divorce is quite expensicve

jasonbell09:11:01

@thomas I recently archived off every Java project I had, every Java startup idea that was gathering dust then deleted Eclipse. So it left me with just Clojure and Emacs and nothing else.

jasonbell09:11:58

Did the same with bass guitars and the Chapman Stick, sold all the basses so I could only focus on the Stick. It worked.

thomas09:11:27

not so sure I could be that brave.

jasonbell10:11:27

Best way for me to learn, total focus.

thomas10:11:42

and I just learned what a Chapman Stick is... learn something new each day

agile_geek10:11:26

If I archived off Java from my life I'm not sure I could pay the mortgage! 😄

mariusz_jachimowicz10:11:50

It's hard for me when I see long functions with a lot of transformations. I love code that is very idiomatic based on Don't force me to think idea 😄

korny10:11:12

I keep meaning to get my wife into clojure - her background is pure mathematics, so it should be pretty natural for her

Rachel Westmacott10:11:37

I keep meaning to get my wife into clojure - her background is wedding dress making, so it should be… oh wait.

Rachel Westmacott10:11:11

although at one point I had a static site generator set up for her business website, and the config files she was editing were clojure source files

Rachel Westmacott10:11:33

she is also WAY better at mental arithmetic than any programmer I know

jonpither12:11:06

My wife does our accounts hacking EDN in Emacs and pushes through git into a datomic backed accountancy system that @malcolmsparks wrote. Amazing we're still together.

korny12:11:12

🙂 Sometimes it’s better to have a diverse partner than one with too much shared context. Our entire lives are dominated by kanban walls and other agile planning artifacts

glenjamin12:11:17

baby still in the blocked column?

thomas12:11:55

maybe the release manager is busy with other things...

Rachel Westmacott13:11:42

I have previously wondered about applying agile techniques (eg. weekly retrospections) to relationship management - but I think its more of a ‘comedy sketch’ type idea than something that real humans would want to do.

thomas13:11:37

and have a stand up meeting each morning?

practicalli-johnny13:11:44

@agile_geek: I do not think you appreciate how much Clojure you actually do know...

korny13:11:52

We did daily standups in the run-up to our wedding, to walk through the wedding trello.

practicalli-johnny13:11:56

@korny In my very small experience mathematicians have a very different idea about the meaning of ratio, but otherwise understand Clojure quite well

glenjamin14:11:11

an agile trainer i did a course with ages ago said he used a kanban board and retros at home

practicalli-johnny14:11:58

Personal Kanban has many interesting stories... There is one of a working mum using Kanban to have a much better open and honest relationship with her daughter. Wedding planning, moving house and many other very stressful activities can be made better by using Kanban effectively...

practicalli-johnny14:11:15

For those mentioning about getting their partners into Clojure, just a reminder we have ClojureBridge on 26th November.

korny14:11:12

We’ve encouraged my sister-in-law to set up a kanban wall for her family tasks - it’s been very useful so far. You don’t really need any IT knowledge to use it like a shared multi-stage to-do list - and it’s handy to point people to Trello if they want to move it online.

glenjamin14:11:30

I won a book at a conference called “personal kanban”, it’s really good

glenjamin14:11:47

reminds me of the focus of what kanban is actually about as well - limiting WIP and visualising progress

rickmoynihan16:11:30

> … is easier/simpler to pick up for programming novices. and more complicated for people who have done OO/imperative/mutable programming @thomas: I think one of the biggest problems I’ve seen with people coming from OO debugging clojure, is that they don’t yet trust its promises… i.e. immutability really is a promise, and you very rarely have to worry about things changing underneath you… I’ve noticed beginners debugging still tend to look for bugs in the kinds of places they’d find them if they were programming with mutable state… rather than stopping and thinking - the language guarantees this won’t happen, what other explanations are there?

rickmoynihan16:11:11

obviously the promise is only mostly true, because it’s not entirely pure - but it still changes the order in which you should proceed with your bug hunt

Rachel Westmacott16:11:00

I found the weirdest bit was trusting that I didn’t need to encapsulate all my state

Rachel Westmacott16:11:05

that and not having local variables

korny16:11:00

Getting used to laziness by default was also a headache - especially when trying to diagnose / debug! I’ve thought in the past that for some situations, it’d be quite nice to be able to disable all laziness. Except of course that’d break a whole lot of language internals.

practicalli-johnny18:11:52

This is a SkillsMatter organised event, so please remember to register on their website (although there is more details on the meeup page if you dont know what Martian is)