Clojure/north 2020

There’s more than one way to solve a problem. This workshop is an opportunity to step out of your Clojure bubble and see how other Clojure developers approach and solve programming challenges.

In the first hour, participants will be tasked with solving 1 (or more) challenge problems, and in the second hour, we will review and discuss the various solutions.

There will be 4 problems, but each participant will only work on 1 (or 2 if there’s time), and then participate in the discussions for all 4. These problems won’t be “puzzles” that require discovering a particularly ingenious solution, but rather, reasonable-scoped “boring” tasks that have been designed to allow for varying kinds of solutions and showcase the strengths (or weaknesses) of Clojure and functional programming.

(For beginners to Clojure, you’ll be welcome to solve the problems in your preferred language, or attempt one of the simpler problems with Clojure).

1st Hour:

• introduce format and problems
• participants work on problems

2nd Hour:

• participants submit their solutions for critique
• review and discussion of solutions to each problem

Length: 2 hours

In recent years, there’s been a wave of new Clojure libraries written with “data driven” APIs. Be it routing, database-querying, or composing systems - problems that were once solved with string-, function- or macro-based DSLs are now being re-solved in a new “style” that’s somewhat unique to Clojure. What does it mean to be "data driven"? Is it just a fad? Is it only for libraries?

In the first hour, we will do a brief explanation of data-driven APIs, and then participants will be tasked with designing data-driven APIs for some prepared problems. In the second hour, we will review and discuss the various solutions.

(Since we’re focusing on design rather than implementation, this workshop should be accessible to Clojurians of all levels).

1st Hour:

• introduce “data-driven” apis
• introduce design problems
• participants work on design problems

2nd Hour:

• participants submit their solutions for critique
• review and discussion of solutions

Length: 2 hours

Clojure is a fantastically powerful, yet simple language. Despite this assertion, it is not uncommon for those new to the language to have a hard time grasping how to build complete applications from the basic building blocks of Clojure.

This workshop will bridge the gap from the basics of data literals all the way to building a complete, stateful web backend application. Participants will learn the following key takeaways:

• Clojure is a data-centric language that frees developers to think about their problems simply and clearly.
• The core functions of Clojure can be thought of as a powerful data DSL that is appropriate for working and thinking in any domain.
• Clojure code is often developed in a bottom-up, functional style.
• Powerful libraries exist beyond Clojure core that are also built on data-driven and functional concepts.
• Stateful applications can be developed and organized in a functional manner by pushing state to the edges of their applications and isolating stateful components.

Length: 2.5 hours

Some of us fight production fires using the REPL, even for non-Clojure projects. Each experience yields a useful script as an artifact. With a smidgen of forethought, these tools we build for ourselves can be shared and reused in creating investigative tooling for our teams.

Format:

• Intro/Icebreaker Exercise
• Data Manipulation Exercise
• Data Joining Exercise
• "Next Steps"
• Q&A

Length: 1 hour

Format:

• Introduction
• Introduction to basics and discussion about concurrency
• Solving thundering herd
• A few anti patterns with concurrency constructs
• Introduction to CSP and how it differs from shared-memory concurrency
• Introduction to core.async library and its capabilities
• Build an in-memory data processing pipeline using channels
• Q&A

Length: 5 hours