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#clojure-uk
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2020-02-20
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seancorfield04:02:06

aset-boolean? TIL. Just followed the rcfotd bot account! And RT'd it 🙂

dharrigan06:02:23

Glad it is of some use. I'll be updating the logo to not infringe shortly, but not really good at design, so may not look nice 🙂

dharrigan06:02:36

The inspiration came totally from @peterwestmacott - I just wrapped it in a twitter bot 🙂

marcus07:02:18

Morning chaps!

marcus08:02:28

It has all the bells and whistles @dharrigan! Link to the source.. I imagine (I skimmed through the code only) that it doesn't cater for repetitions..

dharrigan08:02:22

Yeah, it's not clever, just (pseudo) random 😁

🙂 4
Rachel Westmacott09:02:06

I love that termination is not guaranteed! (genuinely)

dharrigan09:02:35

Do you mind if I mention your handle/name on a little readme I'm putting together?

Rachel Westmacott09:02:45

did you mention the twitter bot in #beginners ?

Rachel Westmacott09:02:03

they might find it helpful there

reborg09:02:23

Thanks both, the function a day habit was what inspired me to write the book a few years ago.

👏 4
dharrigan10:02:59

I'm just checking first, with Alex whether it's okay for me to use the logo (which I've now made transparent in the background) before I make it more widely known 😉

dharrigan10:02:16

Wouldn't like to upset people 😉

dharrigan10:02:39

@U054W022G you're welcome! You're an inspiration to me for writing your book!

reborg10:02:58

good to check, but now that the logo is far apart from the official clojure logo, I don’t think there big problems.

reborg10:02:33

worst that can happen you’ll have to change the logo again :man-shrugging:

dharrigan10:02:28

I'm not great with design 🙂 I'll end up being just text if left to my own devices 🙂

guy10:02:08

Morning

folcon11:02:42

Morn’ =)…

dharrigan17:02:45

It's very funny, lots of jokes for the big kiddies out there.

dominicm17:02:46

dum dum da da de de dum dum

fmjrey18:02:57

To the early clojurians in UK: is there any history of clojure usage in UK? I'm wondering what really helped clojure make a breakthough in several companies in UK. Also which company bet on it first, was it some established company like thoughtworks+uswitch and/or new startups? The question is more about lessons learned and what could work elsewhere than about precise history.

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mccraigmccraig19:02:59

i've been using it for nearly 10 years in the UK... generally through the mechanism of starting projects in clojure or founding companies which use clojure 😬

mccraigmccraig19:02:53

i have had very low success rates of convincing anyone who hasn't already seen the light that doing anything in any lisp is a good idea

flefik20:02:54

clojure seems quite widespread in the City

flefik20:02:20

i know of a bunch of hedgefunds/banks/etc. that use it

flefik20:02:39

wasn’t that how crux started too?

guy08:02:16

I thought it was influenced by juxt tbh

guy08:02:21

But my knowledge is p bad

guy08:02:59

And I also agree starting your own company and using clojure seems to be the way it happened haha

malcolmsparks09:02:18

Yes, the problems of rolling-your-own-bitemporality on a UK banking project inspired the creation of Crux. @U050DD55V and I started JUXT partly because we had some years of experiencing Clojure inside banks and couldn't face the prospect of 'going back' to Java.

rickmoynihan09:02:39

I’ve been using Clojure professionally since 2008. At first for a startup in Dundee where I introduced it for automated clinical trials recruitment work. The CEO was a fan of Lisp from using it in the 80's/90's; so it was an easy sell; especially with the concurrency/immutability stuff added on. I then did some work using for a few things here and there for another startup; that had produced a few network technologies; a spotify like social internet-radio service and later a pivot to an almost identical-to-slack (but totally unsuccessful) like messenger service for business; but built on XMPP… with a side-venture into exploring MQTT. Afterwards I worked at an agency in Manchester, I didn’t get to do much Clojure there (mainly ruby/front-end js); aside from a few one-off data import tasks, and some modelling/concept work for a TV quiz show). Then started at Swirrl as (joint) employee #1, and suggested we use it for our data processing workload rather than Ruby. Since then it’s snowballed and we now use it for almost everything… with ~10 people doing clojure and maybe 9 of which are doing it full time.

rickmoynihan09:02:23

Also I started a number of Clojure groups… First in Dundee around 2008-2010; then in Manchester as the Manchester Clojure Dojo, and subsequently the Manchester Lambda Lounge.

rickmoynihan09:02:22

I think the main route for adoption is essentially getting it into a company who then recruit for it though… Which for me really only happened at Swirrl.

rickmoynihan10:02:38

One other thing, there were a number of people who I introduced clojure to who went on to do other things… One started a startup as a CTO using it (now I believe defunct), but they recruited a handful of clojure(script) devs. Some of these people then went on to work in clojure elsewhere, e.g. I believe at the SLC in Glasgow etc. Not sure if they introduced clojure there or not; I can ask. I think for clojure in the UK most of it happened in London. Though it was also happening in other parts of the UK, below the radar.

fmjrey12:02:18

Thanks all for your answers, sounds like the key point is someone enlightened starting a new project/startup

jonpither17:02:34

Would be an awesome blog, origins of Clojure in the UK. When I joined it in 2011 it was already well established.

jonpither17:02:03

Robert Rees, James Reeves, Bruce Durling, many more.

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fmjrey10:02:34

So was clojure first taken up in banks in the city or did this happen after a few startup/new projects became successful?