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Comment by plinkplonk | Hacker News Reader

Most of this is 'classic' FP, which existed long before Rich Hickey ever talked about it. There is nothing "Hickeysian" (to use a word from this very lightweight article) about distinctions between values and identity.

"Identity is a putative entity we associate with a series of causally related values (states) over time. It's a label, a construct we use to collect a time series."

True enough, but this is extensively covered in SICP Chapter 3 (for example). It is great that Rich Hickey believes this and speaks about it, but he didn't invent the idea, as some Clojure hipsters seem to think.

Not to bash the immensely talented, and balanced Rich Hickey (who doesn't make any grandiose claims, and is a brilliant engineer if the quality of the Clojure implementation is any kind of signifier), but this kind of cult behaviour by some of his followers is annoying.

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Author here. Thanks for pointing out that Rich Hickey didn't invent any of this stuff, and for the SICP reference.

The reason why I wrote the article as I did - as a Clojure hipster - was that I thought two things were important:

1) Getting people exposed to Rich Hickey's exceptional talks. Even if the ideas he talks about aren't new, he explains them in a way that's very easy for me to understand, and I think his speaking style is enjoyable. For my purposes, I don't really care about the attribution of ideas as long as those ideas get out. My thinking is that I'll have more success with this approach than by saying, "Dude, you should check out SICP Chapter 3. Then rock the lambda papers. And here are 100 other pages of great stuff, too."

2) Providing a lightweight reference to newbies like myself. I understand that more experienced programmers might find all this old hat, but hopefully others might find the presentation valuable.

Now, if you'll excuse me I need to go light some incense and place it in front of my Rich Hickey shrine :)

Both your points are reasonable. You've stated them clearly here, but your article comes across as too gushy (to me).

That said, it is your article, and the choice of tone is completely your decision.

My opinion is just that, opinion, from someone on the internet. Take it for what it is worth.

You say (quoting your article)

"In this article (and more to come (possibly)), I begin my attempt to catalog Mr. Hickey's unique viewpoint."

My (mild) criticism was that there is nothing unique or, in your words, "Hickeysian" (shudder) about any of this. Or if you did actually 'catalog Mr Hickey's unique viewpoint' I didn't see it (in the article).

That maybe a trivial point to you, but I believe it is valid criticism, especially when you make a very specific claim, as above. And hey fwiw, I didn't say that on your blog, only as a comment on HN.

Fwiw, I completely agree with the idea that Rich Hickey's talks are well worth listening to for all devs, whether newbies or not. He is a great speaker and clear thinker, and a great engineer.

Actually, I would like to see an article decoding Hickey's way of thinking.

Avoiding 'the gush' makes for stronger articles. Consider this feedback - a random comment on your blog post if you will (imo again, ymmv etc, as always, and that is as it should be). If it helps you create better articles in the future, that's great. If not, that is fine too.

But yes, incense and chanting at the shrine is one way to do it ;). Go for it, and more power to you.

Thanks - I really appreciate the feedback. In my mind, I had meant "Hickeysian" in a tongue-in-cheek way, and I had considered jokingly mentioning that the post was a kind of hagiography. Now I really see how this could appear to someone else, and I have to admit this realization has made me shudder a little myself. This will definitely help my writing.

As for cataloging his unique viewpoint - hopefully as I progress I'll do a better job. I think that some of his later talks like "The value of values" and the one on place may be more uniquely his.

Great, I look forward to your future posts.

I suspect the way to 'thinking like Rich Hickey' (vs specific ideas etc) goes, at least partly, through Polya's "How to Solve It". He seemed to be very influenced by it ( I forget which talk he mentioned it in).

"Hammock-driven Development" I think.

The hammock was never the same after fogus fell-out.

Just wanted to note that, if I'm not mistaken, your reference to "accidental complexity" should be "incidental complexity". Nice post. A Rich Hickey groupie here as well - like you I love his talks for their mind widening value.

That's something I wasn't 100% sure about. When "incidental complexity" was discussed in the talk, I thought it was pretty much the same as "accidental complexity" in the way that Fred Brooks means it in No Silver Bullet. So I used "accidental complexity" and linked to the wikipedia article to hopefully provide some useful info.

There is also Out of the Tarpit[1], which also uses "accidental." This is a paper Rich Hickey mentions in at least one of his talks.

[1]: http://shaffner.us/cs/papers/tarpit.pdf

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