Functional Design in Clojure

Latest Episodes:

Ep 069: Stuck in the Web Feb 28, 2020

Show notes

Each week, we discuss a different topic about Clojure and functional programming.

If you have a question or topic you'd like us to discuss, tweet @clojuredesign, send an email to feedback@clojuredesign.club, or join the #clojuredesign-podcast channel on the Clojurians Slack.

This week, the topic is: "Request handler pitfalls." We examine our history writing web handlers and talk about all the ways we've broken them.

Selected quotes:

"Doing a pitfalls episode is easy, because you just need to look at your scars."
"Letting exceptions escape is TMI for the web."
"Multiple error handling middleware is ok. They're in place, just in case."
"Smaller doesn't necessarily mean simpler."
"A little bit of repetition can lead to a lot of clarity."
"Java can turn just about anything into a string."

Ep 068: Static on the Line Feb 21, 2020

Show notes

Each week, we discuss a different topic about Clojure and functional programming.

If you have a question or topic you'd like us to discuss, tweet @clojuredesign, send an email to feedback@clojuredesign.club, or join the #clojuredesign-podcast channel on the Clojurians Slack.

This week, the topic is: "Serving static assets." We tease apart the layers involved in serving static assets and are surprised by how many we find.

Selected quotes:

"You'd think that serving up plain old files would be nice and simple."
"MIME types are an explosion of complexity."
"Simplicity is the only remedy for complexity. Abstraction is not a remedy for complexity."

Ep 067: Handling Handler's Handles Feb 14, 2020

Show notes

Each week, we discuss a different topic about Clojure and functional programming.

If you have a question or topic you'd like us to discuss, tweet @clojuredesign, send an email to feedback@clojuredesign.club, or join the #clojuredesign-podcast channel on the Clojurians Slack.

This week, the topic is: "Resource management for web handlers." We manage to find a way to get our handlers the resources they need to get real work done.

Selected quotes:

"Let's get some work done in these web handlers!"
"The handler needs a handle."
"Handlers do not live on a desert island, alone."

Links:

Related episodes:

Ep 066: Compose the Codec Jan 31, 2020

Show notes

Each week, we discuss a different topic about Clojure and functional programming.

If you have a question or topic you'd like us to discuss, tweet @clojuredesign, send an email to feedback@clojuredesign.club, or join the #clojuredesign-podcast channel on the Clojurians Slack.

This week, the topic is: "Making middleware to handle JSON." We reinvent the wheel, and along the way discover a few reasons why you might want to do so as well.

Selected quotes:

"Ring's choice: all of HTTP is a function."
"Every concern is a function you compose in."
"It's like a bucket brigade with the request."
"Solving JSON encoding and decoding is a cross-cutting concern."

Links:

ring-json - Ring middleware for handling JSON

Ep 065: Stuck in the Middle Jan 24, 2020

Show notes

Each week, we discuss a different topic about Clojure and functional programming.

If you have a question or topic you'd like us to discuss, tweet @clojuredesign, send an email to feedback@clojuredesign.club, or join the #clojuredesign-podcast channel on the Clojurians Slack.

This week, the topic is: "Ring middleware." We find that the middle is a very good place to start when almost everything is composed functions.

Selected quotes:

"It's all fun from Ring on up!"
"I want to have more than one handler."
"We want to build up different scenarios declaratively."
"The way you compose functions together is by building a function that takes functions and returns functions."

Links:

Ring Wiki
Routing middleware examples
- compojure
- reitit

Ep 064: Put Ring on It Jan 17, 2020

Show notes

Each week, we discuss a different topic about Clojure and functional programming.

If you have a question or topic you'd like us to discuss, tweet @clojuredesign, send an email to feedback@clojuredesign.club, or join the #clojuredesign-podcast channel on the Clojurians Slack.

This week, the topic is: "Ring, the foundation of Clojure HTTP" We focus on the bedrock abstraction for all Clojure web applications and marvel at its simplicity.

Selected quotes:

"Somebody wants to make a web app, and suddenly they're up against all these layers."
"The law of leaky abstractions is good to remember."
"HTTP is just a function call over the Internet."
"Your function gets a map, and it returns a map."

Ep 063: Web of Complexity Jan 10, 2020

Show notes

Each week, we discuss a different topic about Clojure and functional programming.

If you have a question or topic you'd like us to discuss, tweet @clojuredesign, send an email to feedback@clojuredesign.club, or join the #clojuredesign-podcast channel on the Clojurians Slack.

This week, the topic is: "HTTP and the Web of Complexity." We launch a new series and immediately get tangled in the many layers that make up the web.

Selected quotes:

"Clojure has several ways of getting to the web."
"There really are a lot of layers."
"There are a lot of bad requests out there."
"For all the decodings, there is an encoding."

Ep 062: 2019 in Review Jan 03, 2020

Show notes

Each week, we discuss a different topic about Clojure and functional programming.

If you have a question or topic you'd like us to discuss, tweet @clojuredesign, send an email to feedback@clojuredesign.club, or join the #clojuredesign-podcast channel on the Clojurians Slack.

This week, the topic is: "2019." We look back at the past year and highlight our favorite episodes.

Selected quotes:

"2020 is the year of perfect hindsight."
"Even we are surprised at what we recorded."
"Mutation is like weak bricks in your solution tower, they could fail you at any time."
"The Twitter API is just a whole bag of side effects."
"Programming without I/O is just warming your room."
"Not everything does all the things perfectly in all the ways."
"Complexity really is the killer in long term projects."

Related episodes:

The REPL Series (12-14)
- 012: Embrace the REPL
- 014: Fiddle with the REPL
The Time Tracking Series (15-20)
- 016: When 8 - 1 = 6
- 018: Did I Work Late on Tuesday?
The Twitter Poster Series (21-27)
- 022: Evidence of Attempted Posting
- 024: You Are Here, But Why?
The Donut Logs Series (28-35)
- 032: Call Me Lazy
- 034: Break the Mold
Advocacy Episodes (36-39)
040: Should I use lein, boot, or tools.deps?
Data Episodes (41-42)
- 041: Why do Clojurians make such a big deal about immutability?
- 042: What does it mean to be 'data-oriented'?
Questions from our listeners (43-48)
Word! Word! Word! Series (aka Nountober) (49-52)
- 049: Keywords! Keywords! Keywords!
- 052: Functions! Functions! Functions!
053: How can I save my data from serialization?
054: The Forest in the Trees
055: Sets! What are they good for?
056: Opt-In Complexity
057: Clojure/Conj 2019 Recap
Reduce, Reducers, and Transducers (58-61)
- 061: Transcendental Transformations

Ep 061: Transcendental Transformations Dec 27, 2019

Show notes

Each week, we discuss a different topic about Clojure and functional programming.

If you have a question or topic you'd like us to discuss, tweet @clojuredesign, send an email to feedback@clojuredesign.club, or join the #clojuredesign-podcast channel on the Clojurians Slack.

This week, the topic is: "Transducers." We unpack transducers and find a familiar pattern that enables freedom from collections.

Selected quotes:

"The humble sequence. It is a mighty abstraction."
"Your reducing function can get more abstract by passing in the reducing function that handles producing the result."
"This is mind-bending enough, it's worth saying again in a different way."
"We have a function that returns a function that returns a function!"
"The cool thing about reducing functions is that they're not about collections. They are about reduction."

Links:

Transducers - Reference
Transducers are Coming - Rich's introductory blog post
What are good use cases for transducers? - From the Clojure FAQ
Reducers, transducers and core.async in Clojure

Ep 060: Reduce Done Quick Dec 20, 2019

Show notes

Each week, we discuss a different topic about Clojure and functional programming.

If you have a question or topic you'd like us to discuss, tweet @clojuredesign, send an email to feedback@clojuredesign.club, or join the #clojuredesign-podcast channel on the Clojurians Slack.

This week, the topic is: "Reducers." We look at clojure.core.reducers and how it extracts performance by composing reducing functions.

Selected quotes: