Official Clojure Documentary page with Video, Shownotes, and Links(clojure.org)
85 pointsby adityaathalye5 hours ago6 comments
  • mkw50533 hours ago
    In a previous life, I wrote Clojure every day and still look back fondly attending Clojure/Conj and sitting next to Rich Hickey and other Clojure greats at dinner.

    My first startup was all Clojure. AWS only had a dozen or two products and I think we must have been the first to compile Clojure to JS and run it on Lambda in production (the only runtime was Node.js 0.10 at the time).

    Anyway, I cannot wait to watch this

  • ajdegolan hour ago
    didn't know datomic was free of licensing fees - I didn't use it back in the day because the cost was prohibitive... interesting
  • agentifysh2 hours ago
    is clojure still relevant in the post agentic coding reality that opens up pretty much all esoteric languages to everyone ?

    back in the day used to use clojure to write a fintech app but not sure if it is still relevant has uses vs other langs that have emerged

    • MarkMarine5 minutes ago
      One of the main problems I have with the models coding is the feedback loop is way down the chain from generation, it's out at the commit boundary for python when your hooks are running, maybe at the point where the model wants to push a PR. The REPL lets that happen during generation, and the other safety measures help immensely. Immutable data, STM, all of the features in Clojure that gave devs super powers now do the same for a model.
    • netbioserror2 hours ago
      Clojure might be the least esoteric language ever. Call a function, get a value.
      • agentifysh2 hours ago
        It definitely is more "mainstream" than others but I just don't see the same level of attention and enthusiasm around it anymore. I'm sure it is still being used in many places but like Elixir, hiring remains on the tough end.
    • yogthosan hour ago
      Clojure is more relevant than ever in post agentic coding because of immutability and the REPL. The two big problems with agentic coding is context growing in unbounded fashion, and agents being able to get quick feedback on what they're doing. Mainstream languages fail on both accounts. I've found Clojure has been a great fit for keeping agents on track.

      I've wrote about this in more detail here if you're interested https://yogthos.net/posts/2026-02-25-ai-at-scale.html

  • TacticalCoder2 hours ago
    Incredible: I had not idea NuBank discovered Datomic first and that it's Datomic that led them to Clojure, 100 million+ customers, and eventually acquiring Cognitect.

    Good to see David Nolen (aka "swanodette") is in the documentary too.

    As a bonus here's a recent talk from David Nolen about Clojure/ClojureScript and using DOM morphing instead of React.

    If you don't want to watch it all, just take two minutes to watch from 23m15s to 25m15s. He compares a behemoth slurping all the browser's CPU and RAM resources versus a 13 Kb of JavaScript + Web components and DOM morphing:

    https://youtu.be/BeE00vGC36E

    His talk is presented from Emacs, gotta love that too...

    • mkw5053an hour ago
      I don't know if it's still the case, but at old clojure conferences, or meetups, or places of employment, emacs was a prereq and assumed (and the most enjoyable)
  • malindasp5 minutes ago
    [dead]
  • ares6233 hours ago
    AI slop Rich is gross considering his stance on it. I guess it's up to the producers but very tone deaf.
    • TacticalCoder2 hours ago
      The very official Clojure page in TFA links to clojure-mcp (written by the person who created figwheel: a famous ClojureScript library in the Clojure ecosystem) and other AI resources related to Clojure.

      It's not because Rich doesn't want AI-generated pull-requests by people then taking credits that the Clojure community is anti-AI.

      I use Claude Code CLI daily with Clojure, just not in a "write me five thousands lines of Clojure code I won't read" type of way.

    • mkw50532 hours ago
      Are you watching the same thing I am? What AI slop?
      • Jeaye2 hours ago
        I think they mean the video thumbnail, which may or may not be AI-generated.
        • FelipeCortez2 hours ago
          I don't think it is, considering they highlighted it in a post about human craft [1]. I read somewhere it was illustrated by felipemelo.net, but can't find the reference anymore

          [1]: https://bsky.app/profile/cultrepo.bsky.social/post/3mjhubrh3...

          • pixelmonkey2 hours ago
            It'll be interesting to learn whether it was AI-generated. It certainly SEEMS like it is. It has a few "tells":

            - two belts and two Clojure logo belt buckles

            - same code repeated on the steps (odd artistic choice if made by the artist)

            - the seemingly out-of-place scarf, stylistically its color/pattern doesn't seem to fit

            Either way, it seems like an homage to this Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom poster:

            https://printedoriginals.com/products/indiana-jones-and-the-...

            • pixelmonkeyan hour ago
              The BlueSky post has another interesting clue. The pencil sketch on the right. Seems possible a human artist drew the sketch, then had an AI model "colorize" it. And in so doing, maybe the AI model added the 3 genAI tells/artifacts I identified above.
    • agentifysh2 hours ago
      As you demonstrated, AI is not needed to write slop, just because AI is involved doesn't make it slop. We are still very much in the control even if it is generation.