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hrrldon DuckDB – Data power tools for your laptop, now in Clojure (2023)

tmducken creator here, this is so rad to see - duckdb is a monster for sql on csv.

hrrldon ClojureScript Gets Async/Await

No, you're right, we don't want to get rid of it; it's great.

hrrldon Data Manipulation in Clojure Compared to R and Python

In practice we use `ds/filter-column` and `ds/filter` much more than `select-rows`.

The sell isn't about typing a few more or a few less characters, it's about doing data science functionally.

hrrldon A Case for ClojureScript 2.0

Ha! Too late: https://coffeescript.org/announcing-coffeescript-2/

hrrldon Implementing a 2d-Tree in Clojure

Cool! Maybe put the pictures at the top instead of the bottom. (:

hrrldon Lisp/Scheme/Clojure and APL/K (2016)

hrrldon URI Templates, making and matching URIs in Clojure

That's cool - we've used bidi for years on lots of projects and have always just built our links w/ string concatenation. Formalizing this more makes a lot of sense.

With SPAs we've put a decent amount of thought into the tradeoffs between URI length, and putting enough context in each link to reconstitute the app state from a combination of local-storage, data requested from the server, and pure frontend db state (navigation location, parameters, etc...)

Perhaps there's some connection here as well with datafy/nav, there are increasingly spaces where REST-ish graphs of data are arising and capitalizing on the formalism in reference/navigation with something like this seems like a good idea too.

hrrldon Have Clojure UIs Taken the Wrong Path? Part 1

The answer to the rhetorical titular question is 'some probably have, but not in general, no'.

The business logic goes in a .cljc file, and the frontend and backend are both written in Clojure, so it doesn't matter if the components are rendered into html on the server or on the client.

The win isn't avoiding js so that you can have more html, the win is clojure's (edn) data-oriented approach to frontend (hiccup) that lets us use the most powerful language in sight (clojure) to never have to write any js or html. (:

hrrldon Would my experience with Java carry over to Clojure?

In my experience, it's surprisingly helpful to have knowledge of Java libraries and an understanding of Java classes, objects, etc... when working in the JVM with Clojure. Otherwise, one would need to spend time understanding streams and readers and writers and the typical mutable java collections, etc... It's also helpful to be able to find a free Java library and to know how to interoperate w/ it and wrap it up behind a nicer functional interface (knowing the connection from Clojure to the host VM).

In terms of 'useful for employers', I don't think there's anything more useful than having written and deployed Clojure programs that solve real problems. I'd say write a Clojure program, see if it's fun for you, and then go from there.

hrrldon Ask HN: What's the state of Clojure's ecosystem and community these days?

It's great.

Certainly matured a lot in the last 7 years.

Of course, still small relative to other language communities (esp. JS and Python), but for web backends it's wonderful. http-kit is a solid server with a nice simple design and passable performance and features. next-jdbc is similar for relational database connections. In general, the JVM is very powerful and getting better all time, OpenJDK is an amazing project that answered many looming questions about Oracle's licensing plans.

I'd say in the last 7 years in particular there's been a push toward more professional use of Clojure, with things like https://www.whyclojure.com/ popping up, and the prominent use at NuBank driving interest from consumer finance and finance-adjacent corporates.

My personal interest is in Clojure's use in data science, which is related to web backends in that it can be used to tell a more complete full-stack story that can include analytics, prediction, etc... We're finding in our work that a functional approach to data science saves a lot of headaches, and Clojure's inherent orientation toward data eases a lot of pain we've encountered doing data science in non-functional ways in the past.

Could probably try to pinpoint where Clojure is on the Gartner hype cycle today, as I certainly see less activity and frothy hobbyist fervor here and in other places; but that's a bit of a futile exercise. If you peel one layer off, you'll probably find that some of us just grew up and now are just happily and productively making money and things and helping people, with the immense leverage we always knew Clojure had.

hrrldon Comparing a recurrent neural network with a Markov chain

For one-dimensional problems (Like forward generation of word sequences) there are definite comparisons to be made.

In my experience (having used both nets and markov processes in computational creativity), nets hold more promise for higher-dimensional problems (e.g., 2d image generation).

I'm all for having more toys the toybox though, so I hope work continues on both/all fronts.

hrrldon Convert hexadecimal to binary in your head

I giggled at `A/10` ... Thank you for that.

hrrldon A Hacker's Guide to Risk [pdf]

I felt the same.

I found the following by perusing the first few search results for obvious search terms:

http://www.quora.com/What-is-a-good-strategy-for-Risk-the-bo...

It might be a good start at answering the questions raised here...

hrrldon Calvin and Markov: Randomly generated C&H comic strips

I have thought about this quite a bit and I believe that this particular pairing, Nietzsche with Family Circus, is at least especially good (if not uniquely good).

For me, Family Circus was never really enjoyable. Somehow that makes Nietzsche Family Circus even better.

My guess is that if you start pairing things at random, you will on average going to get something much, much worse than this. An understanding of why this is true promises to elucidate the contemporary condition, I suspect.

hrrldon Calvin and Markov: Randomly generated C&H comic strips

Reminds me of one of my all-time favorites: http://www.nietzschefamilycircus.com/

hrrldon Music from very short programs [video]

This looks fun! Has anyone experimented with trying to avoid aliasing?

I would guess it would not make the programs _much_ longer, and could drastically 'improve' the output quality. I put improve in quotes because the gnarly artifact-y nature of this does provide some of the charm.

hrrldon JIT compiler for 6502 machine code, built on lib6502 and LLVM

Super-interesting article, thank you for sharing.

Two great quotes from near the bottom...

"At this point in the project we have Super Mario Brothers 1 running mostly on native code, although not very highly optimized. We've learned that static compilation, while possible, is rendered pointless by some of the inherent challenges that emulating a system presents."

and...

"These issues must be resolved if we want a playable game. Sadly, the solution marks the final nail in the coffin of the integrity of this project."

So brave. 10/10 - would read again.

hrrldon Colour Picking by Simulation

I like it.