In this podcast, episode 158, none other than Rich Hickey, the creator of Clojure himself, joins the show to educate us more on his functional programming language and the technicalities regarding it.
Very clearly, both the interviewer (Markus) and, needless to say, Hickey, are both very well informed on Clojure. Interestingly enough, I remember Markus saying near the beginning that he had no (or little) experience with the Lisp programming language. Despite that, he manages to conduct a well-structured interview, diving deep into the functionality of Clojure and making rather smart questions.
A great number of things are mentioned during the interview, which really lost me in certain segments but retained me in others. I think that, at its core, Clojure appears foreign only due to our early programming experiences with Python and Java. As the interviewer suggests, perhaps a simple 'Hello World' may seem simpler in Java than in Clojure. However, Markus argues that, the only reason why it's perceived this way is because we are already accustomed to the syntax of these languages. If a random person taken from the street were to see the code, Clojure would be easier to explain than Java.
I guess what I find the most appealing about Clojure is how, by the way it's described, it seems like this compact, highly efficient programming language. Hickey states how other programming languages are very inefficient when it comes down to the manipulation of data. Meanwhile, Clojure seems very simple and robust.
Finally, it's strange to imagine that this interview took place around 10 years ago, given that the topics discussed in the interview haven't changed, it's hard to tell that it wasn't recorded in the past few years. Clojure had been created perhaps 4 years before then, and yet Hickey claims that it was already being used in multiple areas for Data Analytics and Machine Learning. I'm curious if these areas of application are still the same.
Very clearly, both the interviewer (Markus) and, needless to say, Hickey, are both very well informed on Clojure. Interestingly enough, I remember Markus saying near the beginning that he had no (or little) experience with the Lisp programming language. Despite that, he manages to conduct a well-structured interview, diving deep into the functionality of Clojure and making rather smart questions.
A great number of things are mentioned during the interview, which really lost me in certain segments but retained me in others. I think that, at its core, Clojure appears foreign only due to our early programming experiences with Python and Java. As the interviewer suggests, perhaps a simple 'Hello World' may seem simpler in Java than in Clojure. However, Markus argues that, the only reason why it's perceived this way is because we are already accustomed to the syntax of these languages. If a random person taken from the street were to see the code, Clojure would be easier to explain than Java.
I guess what I find the most appealing about Clojure is how, by the way it's described, it seems like this compact, highly efficient programming language. Hickey states how other programming languages are very inefficient when it comes down to the manipulation of data. Meanwhile, Clojure seems very simple and robust.
Finally, it's strange to imagine that this interview took place around 10 years ago, given that the topics discussed in the interview haven't changed, it's hard to tell that it wasn't recorded in the past few years. Clojure had been created perhaps 4 years before then, and yet Hickey claims that it was already being used in multiple areas for Data Analytics and Machine Learning. I'm curious if these areas of application are still the same.
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