Eval / Apply is pure magic

In a world of concrete objects, steel frameworks bring sense and order. In a forest of composable tools, libraries and open-ended schemas, it would be the mycelia. A frustrated yet optimistic man muses "Might such a thing come to be?".

The one in which we design a rich Integrated Development Environment (IDE) experience, using Clojure as our muse. Featuring Language Server Protocol (lsp-mode + clojure-lsp), clojure-mode, cider, and more! Buckle up and get a coffee.

We want to maximize our ability to "stay in The Zone". So the aim is to create the fastest, smoothest, tightly integrated, and unobtrusive mechanism to get things done using the keyboard alone.

Or the one in which we confront our elisp n00bishness and try to be better at using it. And we learn new habits to understand our Emacs better. Better late than never.

Elpa, Melpa, git repo. Vendor package straight from source. It compiled? Fetch some more! Elpa, Melpa, git repo. In more adult terms, we learn to use use-package to fetch, install, initialise, configure useful packages that enhance our Emacs experience.

The first action must, of course, be to colour the bikeshed and set some decent defaults.

Or, finally biting the bullet to redesigning my developerly and writerly experience, from the ground up, with Emacs.

Arguably a more interesting, revealing, and kinder question than "What are you curious about?"

Making a software demo is a form of deliberate, serious play. An act that feeds our curiosity, inventiveness, and drive. It enlivens. It enriches. It entertains. And as we asymptotically approach the A.G.I. that's just around the corner, the capacity for deliberate, serious play will remain distinctively, deeply, deliciously human. Career software people like yours truly may please take note!

"What are folks’ views on systems so large where cold-starting the whole system is almost impossible?"... — M'colleague, Shivam, In A Slackroom Next Door.

A while ago, someone in the Recurse Center nerdiverse decided we needed a "Bad Print". They made one. Things escalated. Bad Matrix happened.

Trying out a classification for "Tools for Thought" as a means of augmenting the human intellect, hot on the heels of recent community conversations about ChatGPT, CoPilot, Stable Diffusion etc...

It is with no small thanks to MDN, StackOverflow, Firefox's support for countless open tabs, JavaScript's support for first-class functions, and first-class supportive colleagues, I learned it is possible for a web front end novice to program "text art animations". Whatever that is even. Because I thoroughly enjoyed doing just that for Hanukkah of Data 2022. Here's how it went down.

Here I illustrate how Clojurists (including Yours Truly) like to solve problems and model things using hammocks, pure functions, and the "it's just data" ideology. Also, while the *problem* focuses on "design in the small" of application logic, many ideas in the *solution* can—and do—scale all the way to "design in the large" of whole systems.

Newcomers to Clojure so frequently ask this question that an FAQ/Guide is being discussed, to add to the Clojure website. I struggled a lot with the question too, when starting off in Clojureland. Here are my notes and opinions.

Or, the one in which we hand-craft nano Unix tools using Bash functions.

I find myself telling people that they will have to pry org-mode from my cold dead hands. Which befuddles me. Why, as an ingrate software nerd who has soured on software technology — talk about biting the hand that feeds — do I evince such strong sentiment about a software program?!

FizzBuzz is everywhere. Every programmer passes through its rite of passage, or at least bears witness to another. Over the years, many gentlenerds have taken it upon themselves to discover ever new ways to incant those hoary symbols. I hereby enjoin these few drops of Clojure to that roiling ocean of FizzBuzzery.

Or, the one in which we "take apart" Douglas McIlroy's pipeline from 1986. Doing so teaches an object lesson about the essence of modular, composable, functional architecture.

This primer is for people like me, who long dreamed of lovingly hand-crafting our own home on the Internet. We begin our quest by seeing, feeling, and harnessing pure HTML.energy.

Dismal arithmetic is just like the arithmetic you learned in school, only simpler: there are no carries, when you add digits you just take the largest, and when you multiply digits you take the smallest. How does code look in the two languages I like a lot; Clojure and APL?

Or, *Supremely Functional Bash Programming*, an exploration in N parts...

In which we ponder the Functional Nature of Life, The Universe, and Everything. Please feel free to follow through the weeds, or jump straight to the bottom for my 2 nano BTC on the matter. (Or my current state of mind, at any rate.)

Here lies melancholy that I put to paper from a particularly deep hole, not too long ago. It may ruin your day, or it may make you feel a little bit understood about your dark moments. Your mileage will vary.

Technology is—and ought to be—the /byproduct/ of far more important, powerful, and deep-rooted aspects of organisations — including wholesale societies. The pandemic of technology-solutionism gleefully embraced and amplified by all and sundry makes me believe that people seem to have decided it's the other way around.

Every so often, I want to avoid opening a website in a browser, for ... reasons.

Spurred by a conversation with a whip-smart friend and fellow gentlenerd, who unreasonably believed (believes?) they have nothing worth speaking about at the software conferences we like (IN/Clojure, FunctionalConf, local meetups etc).

I've long struggled with the *Technical* Debt metaphor. It was immediately useful when I first heard it. I still think it is useful, albeit as a starting point. The more I worked with software, the more infuriatingly incomplete it started to feel. So I've reframed it as *Software* Debt, for myself. Here's what I'm thinking.

Not a weighty meandering 300 page Zen dialogue on Motorcycle Maintenance. Merely a meandering blog post in which one contemplates /Quality/ of software products.

Creating things is a delicate endeavour, fraught with peril. People struggle forward through crazy marketplace and environmental complexities just to get from one day to the other. Yet I can't shake off the feeling that we make it harder for ourselves than it should be. I've been trying to work out why. There's a lot to unpack. This post is a start at thinking about it in public.

How this blog came to be is a minor miracle. Long story short, I conned myself into believing nobody will find /and/ read it. But you're here, aren't you? And you're reading this. Aren't You? Confucamus. Well, here's how you got here.