The Evolution of LISP: Mike Hall Interviews Rich Hickey, Creator of Clojure | GOTO Conf 2013

Hi, it's Mike again with UGtastic. I'm here again at the GOTO Conference in Chicago, 2013. I'm sitting down with Rich Hickey. Rich, as you may know, is the creator of the Clojure Programming Language. It's a LISP dialect on the JVM. Thank you very much for taking the time to sit down with me. It's a very busy conference, so I appreciate it. You're welcome. So you created Clojure, and you released it to the LISP mailing list, and yada, yada, yada. Eventually there's user groups exploding, conferences being formed about people who are rabid fans of the language and the concepts and the ideas behind underpinning the language. As somebody who's created this tool and then basically kind of released it to the world, what is it like or what has your experience been creating this tool and then seeing these various groups pop up when you didn't have a marketing team, you didn't have some evangelists out there seeding money for user groups to pop up? What has that been like for you?

One of the things I find interesting is that it's built on a pretty stable, like the culture underneath Java and the JVM, people around that, that's a pretty well-established community. It's not too much exciting things going on. And people aren't rabidly, well, not so many rabid, I'm a Java developer. I mean, people identify as Java, but they're not as enthusiastic about it as they would say, I'm a well-versed Clojure developer or even a Ruby developer. So I just think it's interesting that this, the hottest language right now is built on this really incredibly vanilla, boring platform. Has that been something that's been, you know, a boon or a bust with working with, getting support from people on the JVM?

Where did you work on Clojure?

the mailing list is gigantic. You know, it's 7,000 plus people. And the IRC is full of, you know, helpful people and very, very active. And I think the community has been great. There are people who are looking to help other people succeed. And that's just Fed itself. Right. Well, and even very interesting projects. And the reason I'm probably, I probably have a Ruby bias. And I probably, the reason I probably see more people from the Ruby community going to Clojure is because of just my local, what I see. And I mostly interacted with Ruby. And I was just inferring though that more, it seemed like a lot of the developers I know who have been doing Ruby are kind of bored with Ruby. Or they're starting to see cracks in Ruby's methodologies and how it's implemented. And they're starting to see some of the limitations. And they're looking at Clojure as being an answer to that. Is there any, is there any truth in that? I mean, I've heard that you're a vocal critic of Ruby, the language. Okay, then that's, that's... No, I couldn't be because I really don't have very much experience with Ruby at all. Okay. So, I do see people migrating from Ruby. And, you know, they have their own stories about why they've done that. But I would let them speak for themselves about that. Okay. Okay. And with looking at the way the groups are forming, is there starting to be any... I mean, actually, what I'd like to ask is, how do you receive feedback from the community? Do you have kind of like the Linux model, the Linux model where it's, you're the benevolent dictator and you decide how new features are brought in? Or do you solicit feedback from the users? How do you go about working with the people who are out there using it and espousing Clojure?

Now, I, I'm curious, is it the, the conferences, when you, when you're, when you're, do you, do you go through the Apple model of trying to hold back big releases until right before a conference? Or, or is it just new releases come out on a, on a regular cycle?

but we will often try to get something out beforehand so that people will have it to talk about. And, but it's not coordinated with them specifically. Okay. And with, with dealing with community, what, what has been surprising? I mean, when you launch it, I'm sure, I don't think you expected there to be conferences and user groups popping up for the language. But what is, you know, aside from that, what has been the most surprising aspect of, of the way people have started adopting and espousing?

Has it, has it, and this is more of a question of becoming the center of this kind of, uh, lisp revolution, for lack of a better term. Is that, uh, has that impacted you? Like, I know, or I would see certain individuals that when they go to a conference, they may have gone from being just that person in, in, in the audience to now they're a center of attention. And they're having to deal with that. And I just wonder if that's something that's impacted your ability to move in, in, in technical circles without being, um, like, a center point that people, like, oh, they're too cheeky. And they kind of pounce on you. Has that been something that you've had to, to deal with? Or has it been something that's, that, uh, has either been a positive or a negative thing?

all this attention to Clojure and the ability to, you know, speak at conferences and things like that. You know, I've tried to use that as an opportunity to talk about the ideas behind Clojure and, you know, not really to sell it, but, um, to talk about what it's about. Cause I think those things were important to me in, in, in making it. Um, but no, it's, it's mostly opportunity. And certainly, you know, I don't feel like people are pouncing on me or anything else. I mean, I really enjoy meeting people and, uh, being part of the, uh, the conferences has let me meet a lot of great people and a lot of great speakers and, uh, learn a ton from other people. So, uh, it's, it's just been great. Yeah.

It's interesting. It's funny because as you kept saying Lisp, I, I wanted to re respond by saying, you know, I don't think Clojure is sort of about a Lisp revolution. Okay. I mean, that's more than it is about, um, uh, uh, a way of thinking about making software, uh, simpler than it has been. I mean, that's really what it's about. On the flip side, um, being a Lisp, it should be small and most of the growth should come from libraries. And so that's what, that's what the emphasis has been and will continue to be. You know, it's not like, it doesn't serve anyone for me to pile on features and Clojure and experiment with all kinds of stuff. Um, Clojure is at the bottom of a lot of people's work at this point. And so stability and, and, uh, and, uh, and a cautious incremental rate of change is the most important thing because you don't want to upset everyone who's made a decision and taken a risk to choose to use it. On the flip side, you don't need to keep fiddling with the Lisp because, um, it is, it is a small thing and, uh, and, and it is growable via libraries. And so, um, that's where the community has sort of just taken off. Um, Clojure's growing most in the library space, which is the, which is how it should be. Not, the, the core should be a, a, a stable kernel. Yes. And then everybody builds around it. And when I was seeing Lisp revolution, I really should have been talking more about functional. Um, because from where I, I've observed is I watch people who are adopting Lisp, excuse me, adopting Clojure more in the workflow around I also see them picking up Emacs and I also see them dabbling more with schema or, or, or some other, uh, uh, I'm drawing a blank here, but other more esoteric languages or, or different structures. Um, I'm trying to, uh, say one of the, the, um, uh, the, the logic languages that I'm just drawing a blank on. But, uh, but it's changing their, it seems to me that people who have adopted Clojure, either the way they adopt Clojure helps them experience things in a new way or they're already prone to experimenting and Clojure helped them make a leap from a strictly OO style of programming. I, I do think it's more in the people than Clojure changing people. I think that it's attracted people that are interested in ideas and that want to, um, you know, move forward and want to investigate functional programming, want to have better tools for managing concurrency and, and, and want to use it in their day job. Uh, but I, I, I am most impressed by the community being a community that values ideas. Um, and you see it in the conferences, it's not a lot of, you know, like how do you do X or how do you do Y or here's a new thing, you know, and here's the details of the thing. Um, there are a lot of talks about ideas and a lot of, uh, a lot of investigation, for instance, of logic languages and core logic is an important part of, uh, of Clojure. And, uh, and yeah, so that's been, that's really great. I think it does attract people who are, um, interested. Yeah, so it's, it's, it's a, it's, it's a useful gateway drug a little bit of giving people a chance to break away from preset notions of how to write programs, exposing them to new ideas and then saying, okay, wow, I've already seen that I can do something useful that's different than what I'm used to doing. Now let's go check out some more stuff. And it kind of breaks that ice. Right. You know, like I was saying that I, I know Vim users who are now completely dedicated to using Emacs because they started to do Clojure and then they became comfortable with the parentheses. So then they started to dig into Emacs Lisp. So they're starting to change

I was wondering if you could provide more information on the logic languages that you mentioned earlier.

That's interesting. How does Clojure's core logic compare to these other languages?

That sounds like a valuable feature. How has the Clojure community responded to the introduction of core logic?

That's great to hear. Thank you for your time and for sharing your insights on Clojure and its core logic.

all their, their, their workflows there. And, uh, it's been kind of interesting watching these individuals as they, as they, as they make their migrations and new ideas. Yeah. I think we are, uh, you know, I think we are in the, in the second phase of the kinds of users that we have and that certainly the early couple of years were people who fundamentally were interested in some core aspect of it, either functional programming or Lisp. Um, and now we are seeing people who just see someone that they respect being enthusiastic about it and for whom the entire thing is new. Right. Both the, the parentheses, the list, the functional macros, like the whole thing is new and they, um, they're really taking on something that's novel and a lot of new ideas. And, um, managing that second phase growth is something that the entire community needs to do because now the educational burden of Clojure is, is much bigger. Right. Um, when somebody's got sort of none of the, you know, frequently you'd say of Clojure maybe it's got four components to it and most of the people who came to it knew two or maybe even three of those. Right. And now we're getting people who have one or maybe zero. And, um, so they need the community to help them get up to speed on servile. Almost all of the aspects of Clojure. You know, people using Clojure who've never used the JVM or a Lisp or a functional programming language or Emacs. Right. You know, so that's like a lot of novelty. Yeah, it's a lot of new. What you just said was that my experience is coming. I, I haven't done that background and then it's been hard enough for me to get onto VAM and Ruby and all that. And then I'm watching the people that I work with already moving on to Clojure and then they've got a whole new tool chain that I don't know, you know, from the ground up. Uh, and that's maybe, uh, you know, I'd like to, uh, kind of ask you a closing, closing question is for people who are just completely new, there's just so many resources out there. Some of them are getting a little long in the tooth, uh, you know, some blog posts are updated and some, but is there, what would you recommend for somebody who's just saying, I want to learn Clojure. Um, you know, what, what, what do you recommend as a certain workflow or a tool or which IDE, what, what would you recommend for somebody getting started? They were saying, I'm going to, I'm going to do this thing. Uh, uh, again, it depends a lot on what their background is. I certainly would say to investigate some of the books. There are a bunch of great books out now. A lot of the early books are in their second editions and have had

So most of the books are current. Um, and, uh, you know, if you can get an opportunity to browse through them at a conference or in a bookstore or something like that, you get a feel for it. I would pick sort of two that are in different spaces and you can, you know, talk on the mailing list or an IRC for recommendations. Um, that's a great way to start. And then absolutely, you know, getting in touch with the community early is super important. You get on the mailing list, hop on the IRC and, uh, you know, just let people know you're starting out and, you know, uh, but everybody will have a different set of needs. You know, their editor experience might be different. Um, their background might be different and what they're looking to accomplish might be different, which would also sort of shape the answer. So I don't think there's sort of a universal answer to, to getting started. Um, but engage the community. Yeah. Just try to reach out. Yeah. People will have plenty of advice. Sure. For that. And that's why I said, I do think that this next phase of growth is on the community. Um, even when I started with Clojure, I mean, I didn't have time for instance. It was to explain a lot of the list aspects. Right. So a lot of the early adopters either had to know that or sort of get that on their own because I, you know, I just was trying to tell the story of how Clojure was unique and couldn't tell the story of Lisp and sort of the fundamentals of some of it. And, uh, and now, you know, the scope for somebody who knows nothing is bigger still. So, um, that's where the community comes in and, and, and they're already there. They're there with a bunch of supportive tools and alternative documentation sites and, and, uh, you know, uh, examples and, and, uh, yeah, all kinds of exercises and things like that. Right. So there's a lot of different things and you pick what, you know, makes sense to you. And, uh, but, uh, I'm quite proud of the community and, and, and how well they are, um, receiving the newcomers and, uh, being positive and helping them, you know, succeed.