Transcript
Speaker: I mean, this is like, this is a great start. Should we introduce Joanne? maybe you one Yeah, let's just go for it. Jump in. Yeah, so welcome to DEFN 4F3726. That's the official name for this title, for the title of this show.
Speaker: Or something like that. We won't know until we've hashed it, right? We will have some hash or UUID at the end of it. So that's exciting. We don't know what that's going to be yet. but In fact, yeah real join yeah every word you say, the hash changes. So there's no way of knowing.
Speaker: Yeah, it's completely random. And also based upon our names and whatever names we decide to give ourselves. so Yeah. I'm rambling now. Let's just stop that stuff. Let's go back to the beginning and say, welcome, Joanne, to Deffen. How are you doing?
Speaker: I'm doing all right. Thank you for having me. It's our absolute pleasure. do i Do I introduce myself now, or where was I supposed to wait for cue? I mean, that would be traditional. You must wait. You must wait. i mean, you know, if you don't get cue, you know, no, of course, please.
Speaker: Joanne, would you like to introduce yourself to our audience? yeah My name is Joanne. I am an American living in Belgium. I have been writing Clojure for, i guess, maybe
Speaker: since 2017, 18, on off. And i my last job before my current Clojure job, I was running Elixir.
Speaker: Nice. Yeah, I've kind of been doing a lot of functional programming for the last... Yeah, almost 10 years, which is weird to think about. um But yeah, I go to developer living in Belgium, lived in a lot of places in the States.
Speaker: Nice. We have to come back to Elixir later because I've done some Elixir as well and i kind of love it. So let' let's ah you know earmark a little bit of time to ah love on Elixir, I hope.
Speaker: Yes, yes, um yes.
Speaker: But maybe as we start off, Joanne, we're not with your journey towards Elixir, but your journey towards Clojure. So, you know, you're'm I'm not giving away the age, but i think you did something before Clojure.
Speaker: Yes. So I did ah Ruby on Rails. And I did, that was... this a while. A couple years after I graduated university and then yeah, in in university I was doing Java as most people did in the day. I think they're probably still doing Java. um But yeah, I i kind of felt a little frustrated with programming when I was learning it in school. And then, um, I feel like Ruby kind of made it fun ah and like creative and it's sort of like a, it was, in it ended up being like programming just felt like a much more creative endeavor, which I think like, uh, guilt my brain a little bit more. And it kind of made me fall in love with programming.
Speaker: But, you know, as I think there's like, uh, know what drew me to closure or guess in between ruby and closure i think i you kind of run into limitations with uh like ruby on ruby on rails and like kind of like the type of projects you can work on just because i think yeah like the back in the day i think the ruby ecosystem was really built well for for web but then um i think like for other types of projects it was a little bit more difficult uh
Speaker: like yeah I sort of went on a tangent there. Sorry, that's very on brand for us, right? Yeah. Oh, it's good. It's good. Keep going tangents on tangents are what we really want.
Speaker: Exactly. i mean, if you if you don't go tangent on tangent, then really it's not a good show. so okay I can tangent off that tangent, though. you said Ruby tickled that creative part of your brain and made you enjoy programming. um what Where did that creative part of your brain come from? Were you into any like writing or singing, dancing, whatever creative stuff before programming?
Speaker: Yes, actually. i So i I don't really like talking about this so much because it was so long ago and maybe it was a little traumatic, but i actually did go to school for music. So music performance, I played in an orchestra, but i it's it's a very competitive like environment and it's incredibly... like Yeah, it's it's just like a really super competitive environment. And I just think towards the end, I definitely burned out. But while I was in school, I was actually taking a lot of computer science classes and actually was working as a programmer to pay for my school. So it was actually always in my brain that I was going to do this as like sort of like a backup plan or like
Speaker: I was going not even like a backup plan. i I knew I was probably going to be working like as an office worker, maybe writing code just to like pay the bills. But I didn't really, but I think like after discovering Ruby, I'm like, oh wow, like I actually really enjoy this. Like I actually really want to get good at this.
Speaker: Like not only just like to pay my bills, but also to just like, but not express i just like I just really enjoyed coding a lot more. And then, the yeah, I was really getting burnt out from music as well. So it ended ended up being a good a good decision. no What were you playing?
Speaker: and ah So i played um I played trumpet and piano. ah so But mostly, yeah, I played trumpet and orchestra and a lot of like chamber groups and a little bit of jazz. Yeah.
Speaker: That is a previous life that don't really want to revisit, to be honest. yeah but Well, tangent over. Let's get back to Ruby and other stuff.
Speaker: So one of the things that people talk about with Ruby, at least kind of like, you know, in, uh, with rose tinted spectacles, maybe these days. Ruby tinted spectacles. I think you'll find fair. Yeah.
Speaker: I thought rubies were usually, usually the shoes were Ruby colored, you know, that's true. ah Yeah. But I always wore Ruby colored shoes when writing Ruby just made me feel special.
Speaker: Love it. Nice. Yeah. Don't judge me. Yeah. The point was, anyway, that the Ruby community was very sort of warm and welcoming. is that Was that your experience as well, Joanne?
Speaker: Yes, very much so. a I remember, like I guess, like, i Rails Bridge. like There was like specific programs to also to get like ah more women into programming.
Speaker: um I also found like you know to get started with Rails, like the documentation was just so robust. um There was also, I guess, like...
Speaker: I remember, oh my God, this is ah this is a throwback. There was like, um i don't know, did any of you also like toy around with Ruby? Like, do you know about like wise point guide to Ruby? and Yeah, I worked with Ruby for about two years, I think. Oh, Professionally. Yeah.
Speaker: It's, yeah, it was just kind of like a, i I mean, I don't really just like agree with like the philosophy now, like, you know, but like trying to, but you know, at the at the time it was like, it was just like a really fun way to like look at programming as like, you know, not this like stuffy, boring office thing that you do in front of a computer. It's like, oh, you can like kind of,
Speaker: exercise your creativity and like find new ways to like solve problems or express yourself through your code, which and I don't really agree with now. But i just like being able to just like get the option to do that was, I thought, pretty cool, especially as someone who is like really struggling to enjoy um programming, I think, in um especially like in like these really technical like theoretical classes.
Speaker: I really enjoyed this sort of view, this sort of way of looking at programming. But I think it also like fostered that in the community as well. like i remember going to like like ah a Ruby conference here in ah here in Europe, in Berlin, just like everyone being so friendly and and warm. and like i this my It was my first time like in Europe.
Speaker: it was Yeah, kind of an amazing experience. And wow, I have not thought about that or talked about that in in years. That is that is a flashback. i'm I'm having a lot of memories right now. and One of the things that, like again, maybe these are my Ruby-tinted spectacles or whatever, but ah one of the things I remember from the Ruby community is like I don't recall anybody ever telling me when I like asked for help online, you're doing it wrong. Like, people were super, I mean, maybe that's one of Ruby's kind of strengths and weaknesses that there are 95 ways to do everything.
Speaker: Yes. um Kind of like Pearl in that way. But like, I always found Ruby people very non-judgmental. They were like, yeah, sure, you can do it that way. Or you could do it this way or this other way. Like, it's all good.
Speaker: For the most part. I think like, um once I got, i ah like I guess a bit more, there was a Ruby job I had guess maybe a tet a little more than 10 years ago where like there was like we did have strict guidelines and I feel like okay we were definitely like quite nitpicky um to the maybe to a fault um in my opinion ah that it it kind of drove me a little nuts like there was but think yeah generally like the vibe online was pretty good i guess maybe yeah I also
Speaker: Yes. um which i I don't know where to go from here without... The thing I was going to say to you actually about that was that although I think Matt is famously like a super nice guy and like, you know, super interested in making the developer experience fun, joyful.
Speaker: um DHH, on the other hand, seems like quite an opinionated character um who has obviously turned rather rogue recently, um but has always been quite a sort of like... um highly opinionated person. And but how did that affect, like, maybe, maybe again, this is not a Ruby podcast, but you know, um, did that have any impact on, on your experience as a Ruby developer or was that just something that you kind of like didn't take any interest in?
Speaker: maybe when I was younger, i think like the opinions of like the leaders definitely affected me a lot. And I guess maybe i was lucky that when I was younger, i think,
Speaker: i mean' Okay, yeah, like the the programming world and the world in general, I think, was a little bit more progressive and maybe not as thoughtful as it is now. um Nowadays, I take everything with heavy, heavy grains of salt, and I guess I just am very selective of like people I listen to in this sort of programming world. A lot of technical... like sometimes Yeah, like people are, who have, sometimes people have both really bad technical opinions and personal opinions of the world. Yeah.
Speaker: And i I'm gonna leave it at that. Okay. all right We wanted you to name names. yeah that's That's what we were going for here. but you know you You brought up DHH and I i disagree with him both. on yeah like So it it makes no difference to me what whatever he's yelling on the internet. I don't really listen to him in either ah so it's not a problem for me yeah yeah yeah that's good okay so let's move on then to uh to please away from this dickhead uh on to yeah on it was it c closure after ruby and then if if it was like what triggered that change
Speaker: I guess so. There is ah a job I did have that was kind of like a very heavy JavaScript and Python job. um But I was playing around a lot with Clojure during that job. I think from like a technical standpoint, like I wasn't really invested, I guess, on a technical standpoint in that.
Speaker: Anyway, um so know I was playing around with Clojure. like during this period and i I think like there was a pretty small but active uh closure community enclosure in in Denver when I where I was living um and I was kind of always like eyeing them a little bit and then I I met my partner I think in or we started dating in like 2017. I and should know.
Speaker: sign Don't worry. He doesn't listen to the shit. she No, he does. Anyway. um no So, yeah, i my partner is a Clojure developer and i he never really... No, he he did nudge me into it. He never like forced me, but he was like he did talk about it a lot. And so...
Speaker: I played around with it. I went to the Denver Clojure meetup. and They were all also incredibly friendly, welcoming, really wonderful people who kind of were very encouraging. um And so like through that, I just kind of built a lot of like little side projects in ClojureScript because I was doing a lot of just like ah playing around with like building graphics with like d three during the time.
Speaker: And I was just doing that all in Clojure. And I realized, wow, like this is something where I'm taking data and transforming it and like translating it to the DOM.
Speaker: This language is really good at transforming data and just like really easy to work with this stuff that I find really tedious. Wow, maybe I should just keep writing this language. yeah yeah And i that is how I came into closure.
Speaker: And I was also really lucky, like once again, like the Denver community, like i It was really interesting because, um yeah, like the the Denver closure community at the time was definitely like, it skewed like very male, a lot older than I was at the time, but they were still like just really, really like welcoming and like just kind of felt like one of them, even though like I definitely was not that that demographic and like I felt it when I walked into like the room, but never it was it was just like a very,
Speaker: Yeah, it was like, it was also like a ah welcoming environment without being, i guess, like, where am I? I'm not. It was a welcoming environment. Yeah, good to hear. Yeah, I feel like people who like Clojure tend to really it a lot.
Speaker: Yeah, we've talked about that like on the show every now and again, trying to figure out like why that is exactly. And you know it's there there's maybe a bit of a chicken and egg sort of situation here. like But did it just happen by chance? you know Just the the first few people that stumbled onto Closure were like nice and welcoming people and they set the tone? or you know How did it happen?
Speaker: oh Who knows? But it's very nice that it did happen and we're benefiting from it. so Indeed. Indeed. Yeah. So then you said at some point while you were still living in Colorado, at Denver, um you came over here and went to Clojure D. Is that right? or did I get the the timelines mixed up?
Speaker: Seems like I got the times. Yeah. No, I guess I went to Closure D when i I first moved to Berlin. Okay, okay. So yeah, my my partner lived in Berlin at the time. And yeah, I moved over.
Speaker: um Yes, so i but I did go to a closure meetup while I was visiting him one summer. um And that is how I got my first closure job. Okay.
Speaker: And so how did that go down? That sounds like an interesting story. Just went to a closure meetup in Berlin. I talked to a couple of people there and I just happened to talk to someone who was hiring. And I went to their office the next day and think I had a couple more interviews, even when I went back to Denver and it somehow all worked out.
Speaker: It's just like a very like, I think, yeah, like, um so the the company I was working for between like 2015 and 2017, they basically got bought out and we all got fired um as sometimes this happens in the tech world. yeah um So I was just kind of freelancing in the time.
Speaker: And I thought I was going to continue freelancing, but I didn't really enjoy trying to find clients. And I i sort of miss like diving deep into a problem. Like i kind of like being an employee and just kind of working on the same problems for years. um So I was really lucky and I happened to be in the right place in the right time when I was looking for a job in Berlin.
Speaker: So at that time, if remember right, well, Berlin was kind of like a legendary place in the Clojure community. I'm not sure it's so busy anymore, but we had the Clojure D conference. We had um about like at least half a dozen companies in Berlin that were hiring a lot of Clojure developers.
Speaker: So what how was that like when you moved over there? Do you feel like it was ah um an active place or was it just like heads down with the job? did I feel about Berlin. Yeah.
Speaker: Berlin in Georgia or Berlin in general? Well, you can go with Berlin first. Yeah, let's go with Berlin first because i know I've been there a few times and I think it's sensational. but ah Yeah, I have the other opinion, but you know we can we can fight it out.
Speaker: You know what? I'm going to be... yeah i I think I... so i I visited Berlin a bunch of times and I had a really, i really enjoyed working for the company. Like I had worked for the company for like maybe a month or two while i was still living in Denver. And I was like, yeah, I'm, I really like these people and I'm, I'm pretty happy to, and I was in, yeah, my partner lived there.
Speaker: so I, I thought I knew what I was getting into. And then I think within the first month, I knew like, oh, no, this is not a good match for me. The city is not a good good place for me. And a for, I guess, the good, since since like I am American and this is how we we talk, we always like to start with it have compliments the sister we get feedback sure yes um like yeah ah the closure scene was really active um the the tech scene was really active as well like it was just kind of cool to be around like so much energy um yeah there there was energy in denver as well but i feel you know there was there's just so many people like kind of working on startups in in berlin it was just like
Speaker: think like um yeah there were just meetups all the time like there are tech meetups everywhere and yeah like i i think like because like the closure meetup like would get like maybe like don't know if 60 just like a lot of people like more than like the 10 10 people that like showed up to our 10 people at most that showed up to our like little little Denver get-together. But it'd be like 60 to 80 people.
Speaker: And then we had the big conference and there'd be like, you can go grab a coffee with your Clojure friends who worked at another company. um like go talk about what you're working on. And like that that was kind of cool. Although i Well, I really liked the people that I was friends with. Like, i I also really enjoy, like, that most of my friends when I was living in Denver and also when I lived in the States are not tech people. Right. And it was just kind of hard to escape, like, the tech bubble. And so, and that's that's part one. And I guess, like, part two is, like, I just didn't really vibe with, like, the culture. um i just, I don't know. It just, it felt...
Speaker: just very incongruent to how I live my life. um And I just couldn't really fit in there. I knew pretty fast that this was a terrible idea, that I just moved. and and then But I tried to stick it out because you know i had just packed up my bags. And I also really liked my job.
Speaker: And then the pandemic happened and that made everything a lot worse. It basically amplified all the problems. what What are your thoughts about Berlin? I mean, I i i guess both of you have been to Closure D?
Speaker: Yeah, yeah. mean, the reason why I liked it, to be totally honest, I mean, I haven't lived there, so I i can't speak as a sort of, as a... As a citizen, let's say, i know I'm just thinking about the fact that I'm a vegan, and when I go to Berlin, vegans are like first-class citizens, and that's really nice. you know um And I've usually went to closure conferences or other conferences where I've really enjoyed myself, had a lot of good energy from the people there. So so my my kind of experience of Berlin is is probably rose-tinted, let's say, and definitely you're not worried about the sort of practical day-to-day stuff.
Speaker: Yeah. Obviously it's a city full of history and some interesting like sites to see and all those kinds of things. So, yeah. So I've got a, probably a more positive experience than, than Josh, I guess. Josh or have you just, no, no, no, I've never, I've never lived there.
Speaker: yeah No, like Berlin is the city that I've never intentionally gone to. Like, it I guess ah I did go to a closure conference there. um And that was on purpose. But like, I didn't go to go to Berlin. I went to go to the closure conference. Like, okay.
Speaker: And I actually had a good time. That was like the the second Euroclosure Berlin, because i I guess the very first Euroclosure conference was in Berlin, but that was like, I don't know, 20...
Speaker: twenty 13 or 14. So I went to the one that was in 2016 maybe. think you were there, Ray Dalioffi Yeah, was there. Ray Dalioffi So whatever year that was. um And actually, ah that's when i but this is kind of, sort of, Joanne, I guess similar to your experience. I eventually got a job with the company because of somebody I met at the Euroclosure.
Speaker: um that That was Ben actually ah that I met there. So that experience was super positive. I met like Ben, I met Dave Leapman. um Oh, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, a bunch of people who were, ah they were doing a closure bridge. You mentioned Rails Bridge. um And so, yeah, I had a like good time talking to those people. um And then subsequently, I worked for a company that had an office in Berlin, and I just kept getting sent there for various reasons. And I guess like when I went there for that closure conference, I did kind of all the historical stuff, and I'm like really into kind of Cold War history, so i enjoyed that.
Speaker: um But I'm not like young party type person, which I think is one thing about Berlin that you love. I wasn't vegan at the time. and I just found the city so sterile um other than the history. And I just like it didn't.
Speaker: I mean, i live in Stockholm and Stockholm to me is like kind of small and welcoming and warm in a way. And yeah, so Berlin just, I don't know, just never really.
Speaker: never sat right with me. And I've been there so many times, so many times. hey I feel you on like, yeah, it it feels like, at least for international people, like, it's just like the culture is like this, this young party culture And I'm sure that's, there's, there's definitely other things to do. I mean, there's, there's a lot of history in Berlin. There's a lot of music and,
Speaker: culture, but it's just so prevalent. For instance, Denver, like I had um like an old like college friend who moved out to Denver. He didn't like hiking.
Speaker: and i was like like but like i just like and He didn't like hiking and he complained that like people just like you know talk about beer all the time. And I'm like, well, this is... It's like the two things Denver is known for. Exactly. Exactly. just like, and i'm i'm just like, okay, well, like, this is this is a very difficult match. I mean, yes, you can find your tribe of people, obviously, but you're gonna have, it's, it's just a lot easier if you enjoy these things. And yeah, that's, it's, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: but How long did you stick it out, Joanne, before you wised up and ran back to the U.S.? I mean, I guess technically two and a half years, although like a I did fly back during the pandemic when like the pandemic restrictions lifted a little bit. And then I had trouble getting back to the States because they kept basically like they would keep like changing the like the testing requirements and like... um So I had to like, my flight just kept getting delayed. And once like, yeah, when you change your, when when they, sorry, when they change like the testing requirements, then like I had to go like rearrange everything and then try to get a flight. And then sometimes it would take like weeks for me to get like a, yeah, to get a decent flight back.
Speaker: So yeah, i I don't think I was back in the States for that long, but yeah, I think like two and a half years. It was, Yeah, it was, it was, um and then like, yeah, I was living with my parents for a little bit in New Jersey and then I i moved to Richmond, Virginia. Yeah.
Speaker: Which is, of course, the best state of all the United States, I think. i listen i was surprised how much I loved it. like i I really wanted to move back to Colorado. I was pretty set. And then first, I just really wanted to stick a little closer to family. Because Richmond's just a couple hours drive from where my parents were living, even though it is a completely different culture than New Jersey. It's a place. Yeah.
Speaker: But i i love I really loved living there. um Just the people, like the mountains, the the water, the nature. Nature there was very good. Amazing. Well, thank you for coming on the Virginia podcast to talk about Virginia. Let's do that for another half hour at least. yeah Yes.
Speaker: which Well, so um we've kind of heard your Clojure origin story and we've done a little, ah you know, friendly ribbing of Berlin, let's say.
Speaker: ah but What are you kind of working on now? are you still working with Clojure? Yes, I am still working with Clojure. I am working in health or in health tech industry.
Speaker: guess previously this, I guess like after my Berlin job, I worked a couple of jobs in the States while was in Virginia, was working in health tech and then was working in insurance. And I, when I was looking for jobs again, I really wanted to stick around, I guess like highly regulated industries. Yeah, who doesn't love it?
Speaker: Honestly, kind of really, I just, after working in a lot of like sort of startups and that I, you know, where we're just trying to find a market fit. It is kind of nice to work in these industries where there's like a lot of rules and I kind of really enjoy it.
Speaker: um There's just like a lot of like restrictions. And there's also like you're you're building stuff for people who like missed
Speaker: Not like they don't want to use computers, but like you you want to just make their experience a little bit better because they have more important things to do. Right. That's that's kind of what I really enjoy about these fields. But yes, somehow I ended up both in or ended up but with a job that does both health or is in health tech and in Clojure. So was very very grateful for that.
Speaker: So stability, yeah. I mean, I think we talked about this when we when we were, because we we we met recently at ah but at a but a bel a Berlin meetup, at a Belgium, a Belgian, really a kind of Leuven meetup, closure meetup.
Speaker: Yeah. And yeah, this is one thing that's really frustrating about tech for me is all this like, you know, move fast and break things is it's a recipe for disaster. I mean, it's, it's a total joke.
Speaker: um And now this sort of concept is being unleashed, you not only in the technical world, but in the real world. um So I completely get it. I mean, for me,
Speaker: you know I work in a sort of like in a startup kind of like cloud field where there aren't so many rules, but um but at least there's hardware, to keep you honest.
Speaker: you know where you know Whereas ah ah yeah I've got to say, yeah, finance and healthcare, insurance, all these kind of things where there are proper rules where people give a shit about data,
Speaker: These are the kind of places that we should have more of that, I think. And obviously more tech for government and for, you know more important things in life, like you say. Yeah, I definitely agree with that. I mean, I i think like,
Speaker: I remember in the two thousand I'm just going to, I guess, talk about ah the old days. but yeah Back when i was starting my career in like the 2010s, I feel like yeah the vibe was to just, you know, disrupt the industry and try to build all these things and try to find market fit.
Speaker: And mean, I mean, like I am still trying to, I guess I am working a job where people are still trying to find market fit, even though we are in health and it was the same thing in insurance, but it's, I don't know, like these are things that like, these are problems where tech, if you'll,
Speaker: could solve a lot of problems. um But I think like, I remember in the States, like, I guess back in like that time, like people kind of avoided tech because of like, you know all the regulation around it and you just can't move as fast. And there's a problem there.
Speaker: Going with this tangent. think the main problem with the with that kind of environment is that the venture capitalist people are kind of reluctant to invest in it because they don't see like massive returns. You know, they don't see that, oh, you know, we can like Instagram this thing or we can, you know,
Speaker: Facebook it or you know whatever. you kind of like The scale up isn't so large. These things tend to be business to business things. um And then the market is a bit smaller. So I think the kind of excitement around that VC people generate is a bit different. you know And honestly, I think that's another... i mean Whenever there's VCs involved... Yeah.
Speaker: a Yeah. yes be I also noticed when you said ah that, I think you said something, the hardware keeps you honest, at least. Yeah.
Speaker: Just sort of like, for um it kind of made me think about, like, I guess, like, like just building a lot of these things, like imagining I had like, or like building a lot of software where we all like lived in a world where we just didn't think about hardware and like sort of these limitations or just like, um i don't know where I'm going with this.
Speaker: All right, this is the side. I'm going to just rewind and it's okay it's okay just pop that one off the stack. Yeah. dust yeah Are you kind of like thinking that, is it like we used to think that everything was essentially like like free and like no resource constraints at all. And now we're living in a world where those constraints are like coming back hard.
Speaker: I think it also, like, im I'm getting older and I think about these things a lot more. Like, I guess I used to program, like, I, like, like we had an unlimited, like, hardware budget. but's um And now, like, I am thinking about this, especially, like, with with, like, the age of, like, all these data centers popping up. Like, we're kind of seeing, like, a lot of the consequences of, like, building stuff where we just don't think about, like, efficiency. um That's sort of an aside. ah
Speaker: That was a tangent that I did not intend to go down. No, it's an interesting aside though, right? Because I just read something, I think it was on the Planet Closure syndication feed thingy.
Speaker: um And the the guy was really going in, ah sorry, i I think it was the guy who wrote it, whatever. The person who wrote this this blog or something was really going in hard on the JVM, basically saying like,
Speaker: The reason I don't do Clojure anymore is because the JVM is a bloated piece of shit and you can't get any performance and like everybody should care about you know squeezing every last cycle. So I think maybe there's somewhere between we don't give a shit and that maybe is the sweet spot.
Speaker: i I don't think the JVM is the worst offender. like I don't think so either. Yeah, just... Yes, I agree. There's somewhere in the middle. I also, yeah, like, don't think that's necessarily.
Speaker: i mean, yeah, you can go like, I mean, if you're like writing C level code and like writing very good C, like then sure, that's, you know, yay. That's um miss great.
Speaker: But I think there is. JPM is not the word. No, that can't right. No. no that Yeah, I had a similar reaction, especially when this person was talking about the, they were writing a compiler and they were like, yeah, but I couldn't be bothered to make it an optimizing compiler. And I'm like, yeah, so 25 years of research in the JVM into like JIT and making stuff go fast. Like, that's, you know. Yes.
Speaker: Anyway, sorry. Yes. No, that's. I might ask for that. No, actually don't send it to me. I'm just going to get angry. Now I'm going to send it to you. know yeah yeah yeah Actually, hopefully that person isn't listening to this. Probably not since they don't do closure anymore. But you know if you are, I'm not judging you, but I am a little.
Speaker: Maybe they're hate listening. I think a lot of it is to do with like use cases as well. Because I think if you are writing stuff low-level, where you're addressing hardware, and yeah maybe the cycles are kind of expensive, or you know everything feels a bit ah more expensive down at a lower layer, then maybe closure is not the right thing to do.
Speaker: But if you're writing like a script or something like that or something that's going to run for 10 minutes or something, I mean, do you really care about it? Or if you're going to run a long server where where the JIT is going to kick in and be optimized to hell, right then again, you know you're not going to be like wasting too many resources.
Speaker: So it it all depends on kind of like where where you're living in this like continuum of of needs and use cases. Yeah. yeah
Speaker: There is, yeah, there is somewhere in the middle. Yeah. I think a lot of it really just depends on like the context that you're in. and Right. Because what you get out of things like closure and we'll come on to Alixir in a minute, you know, these kind of higher level languages, you get this expressivity and you get this clarity of code.
Speaker: that you don't get from these lower level boilerplate style languages where you have to care a lot more about memory and every little line, you know? So I feel like that, that that's, that's really what you're gaining in terms of like expressivity and in terms of maintenance.
Speaker: Whereas, yeah. Go on. I just, just, yeah. Like, but with what Josh said, like you also have like the JVM yeah with decades of research,
Speaker: you be optimized to like handle like yeah handle like it's just it is like optimized to be more efficient versus like Yeah, there's there's definitely four choices, I think, out there. And like there's also like ways that you one can write code that is incredibly inefficient. or yes Yes. If we want to there, there's also... i mean, this is also a problem with like these really big bloated, like, bi-coded stuff. What?
Speaker: Sorry. just so I thought all that stuff was amazing and the best. is it am i allowed to Am I allowed to bring that up here? are you going We don't have to go down this rabbit hole. I know.
Speaker: This is not a rabbit hole. this is this is ah This is the hole we're going to go down. Yeah, this is what everybody's talking about. No, I mean, you're welcome to talk as much or as little about that stuff as you want. i mean, I think Ray and I have made our opinions pretty clear on on AI and Vibe Coding and all of that. Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah. yeah We can just move on. We can just move on. Basically, you know, yeah, it's, I mean, they call it like they're vibe coded, but they also call it slop coding now, don't they? So, which I think is, I think I like slop coding a lot better because it kind of like is more descriptive of what the output is. You know, vibe coding is the input. Slop, vibe coder is the sort of,
Speaker: inputter and slop code is the output. That's how I like to think of it these days. know Everything on the output side is basically slop, and all you know it's all good vibes on the input. Yeah, great. Have great vibes, but you know you're serving as slop here.
Speaker: So, um yeah. But I think, to your point, data structures and algorithms still matter. you know Yes. we're still We're still stuck in Knuth's world. Yeah.
Speaker: yeah Yeah. oh Keep reminding myself that like when I think about, because I guess we talked a little bit about my university days and how I struggled through those classes and then they're still handy. But it's also, yeah, like um good I just tried to remind, like, i I guess, like, sometimes I have, like, a career crisis where I'm just, like, I don't know what I'm doing in this career anymore. Yeah. Like, especially in this age.
Speaker: And, like, because I know, like, realistically, like, I guess, like, my my thought, like, maybe, like, yeah two years ago was, like, you know, I'm just going focus on the basics. Like, I'll be employable. Let's, if I just focus on the basics and just keep growing and, like, solidifying my my knowledge of, like,
Speaker: you know, the the stuff that has been around for decades, like the the research, if I just like, you know, keep focusing on setting that, like, you know, that'll I'll be, I'll be okay. And now I'm like, I don't know anymore, man. Like I just, yeah it's a weird world.
Speaker: is Yeah. because Especially because you you want to build something. like i think like you know us i feel like people who have interest in this field want to build good things and they want to build things that are fast and resilient.
Speaker: The stuff that we all aspire to build in design and I don't know if there's room in the industry for that. but i think we all hope for that. i mean you know the the The fundamental um problem that we have to some extent is that the people ah people who are who are essentially paying the bills, they at some point have to decide that the quality of the human work is better than the quality of the machine work.
Speaker: Um, and that seems to be the the problem these days is that yeah they're kind of willing to take a risk on the machine work on the basis that at least for the moment, it feels like it's less expensive, but I think we're probably all feeling that that price is going up and up and up. And obviously the slop that's being served comes at a cost as well. So, um,
Speaker: you know it is a question of whether we can kind of survive this drunken moment it feels like it feels to me like the industry is completely drunk yeah I think that's not a bad metaphor because I'm just thinking about how you know the the people who are most positive about using this stuff like professionals I mean not not just random like five coders at home but people using this professionally and very enthusiastic you know they're talking about how much it's helping them and so on. But like, they've only been doing this for like,
Speaker: you know, not even a year. And I'm just thinking, you know, you are having a great time in the pub, you know, you're, you're downing pints left, right and center. And then you wake up the next morning and all of a sudden things don't feel so good. And I, I think like we will get to that point where, you know, we've, we've done enough of this, like we've poured enough slop into our systems and eventually It's going to be very bad, you know, just like with any sloppy programming done by humans. I, I think we've probably all ah' been through that, right? Where a code we've written ourselves in a hurry, you know, nine months later, we're like, Oh God, shouldn't have cut that quarter. Yeah.
Speaker: yeah Yeah. I mean, normally we rely on a kind of balance between, you know, the whole crew having some experience and, you know, so the whole, the whole project isn't kind of like junk.
Speaker: Um, although sometimes it is, you know, if they're, if they're, if the people who set it up, are like don't have the experience or, or make the wrong choices, you know, you can just, you know, at the very beginning, you can just get the architecture wrong.
Speaker: and and And then it's impossible to fix. You know, it has to be a rewrite. And i that's the worry, isn't it? That you end up in a kind of gambler's dilemma or a sort of, what do they call it? is it gamb People call it different different kind of things. Yeah, sunk cost fallacy, gambler's dilemma.
Speaker: where you just keep on betting, betting, betting, you know. um But that's a very, again, it's a very, not a very sober way to run a company or to run a business.
Speaker: No, i I guess, no. i tried, yeah, I think like in my last company, i tried to make this argument a lot. It's just merely a a worker in a larger system.
Speaker: I think it's, it's, I feel like another thing is like also like you know when you have like like these situations where you're rushed to hit a deadline and you're building a bad system, you kind of at least like have a bunch of people who are like, okay, you know I know everything is like held together by duct tape, but I know we're we're that like i know where like the weak spots are. So you have like this this weird tribal knowledge um of just like all like the tech debt you have, which is... Yeah, like it's it's maybe...
Speaker: not great, but now now you have like you've now let like now you have like a system held together by duct tape and you also don't have and you have people who are like, I don't know, like let's ask the robot to figure this out.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I've been there. Like, it's interesting that use the word worker, right? Like just a worker. And I think like there is something there. And I think that's why it's really important to have these conversations with our coworkers, you know, and, and try and get people on our side, because if you're the single voice, you know, if you're, you're not in management, you're a worker, like,
Speaker: yeah There's a limit to what you can accomplish as a single voice. But if you can, kind of get get your coworkers on side. Because you know back to talking about creating this tech dad and having duct tape everywhere. like if you could get enough people on your team to kind of start pushing like, hey, we really need to do something about this. We need to spend some time to actually fix some of these kind of rickety places in the system. Like, typically you were able to do that. Maybe not as much as you wanted, but, you know,
Speaker: If you're just kind of the one person in the team who's like, all of our code is shit and we need to stop everything for nine sprints and only work on, that's never going to happen. But I don't know. So I just picked up on you saying the word worker there. And that was interesting to me. I don't know if you have any thoughts or this could have just been my soliloquy. That's fine too.
Speaker: I think I may at a very cynical part from the point in my life when it comes to these things.
Speaker: I think like ah I'm going to just, I guess I could talk about my Elixir job because I don't know, no, I definitely know no one from my old job is who is an el Elixir programmer is going to listen to this. I did Elixir and Elm, by the way, which is even more obscure. So yeah, so yeah that that'll be a fun aside if you want to go down there. But yeah, no one's listen. I think we were all just like,
Speaker: we got to like collect our paychecks and feed our families and get health insurance. Um, and it is, it is, you know, we've, I was also like, we were acquired by a pretty big corporation and I think I had just kind of like fallen into like the corporate worker trap where i was like, I can't change anything. Um, right. Sorry if that sounds incredibly cynical. Um,
Speaker: But it's it's, yeah, that's... I do think that there... I want to believe that there's, like, power in numbers, but feel like everyone's just too afraid to i but say anything, especially in this this sort of climate and this economy and this job market. Yeah.
Speaker: yeah No, I think you're right. And also the kind regulate, the regulatory, um, frameworks are against it as well, you know? So there's a sort of, I think there's a, we've talked about this before about the fact that tech in general is kind of tried on the one hand to mollycoddle programmers, you know, like at the beginning of the sort of century, and, You know, everyone was kind of pampered, mainly to get them to stay at work longer. Rockstar and all of this nonsense. Yeah.
Speaker: When's the last time you heard that word, right? Yeah, exactly. But but like eventually, kind of like people did realize that, oh actually, we're just workers here. um But you know there's still this, oh, you've got to join the family. we you want to treat you like the family. and Yeah. were Phrases like that, which are kind of like, it's becoming a bit hollow, let's say, these days when yeah the pay is more standard worker-type pay and...
Speaker: you know Everything's becoming a little bit more normalized, let's say, in the tech industry. Yeah. Just as a as an aside, so we had this, um I live in Sweden, and we had this US like speaker come over to talk at this bigger company that I worked for.
Speaker: And the the speaker was like, yeah, you know, like we're all a family here. And like all of this, oh it was so funny. All of the Swedish people just looked at each other like, what? No, this is a job. like my family's at home. Thank you.
Speaker: oh my God. Just a hilarious cultural like difference there, I guess.
Speaker: God, that was the time. Yeah.
Speaker: Just trying to think of like ah another related. no Yeah. it It is kind of wild how quickly like like attitudes change. I think like less than five years. Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah. I'm like ah sort of an aside. I have like something while we were talking about this, we can move off this topic if this is like too much of a bummer. But like, I think it's like hilarious that like, i I think back to like some of like the PRs that I've had where people just like nitpick every single type of decision I make. And now, now these days people are like, oh, the the robot wrote it. Just, just, I know. it in there. I'm just like, what happened? What happened?
Speaker: And like, what, what, was like a period of six months where like now we just all listen to the robot. Yeah. Get another robot to do the review. That's yeah new, isn't it? Yeah. the ah adversarial reviews, right? Like I'm not even joking. People are talking about this, right? It's like, yeah, you use Claude to write your code and then you use Copilot to review it. So then, you you know, what the fuck is going on here?
Speaker: That being said, I think I actually have given like several presentations on like AI coding and I i know it's, I know, but I'm also like, I'm trying, I'm trying to like survive in this.
Speaker: Well, I but i think we're all trying to survive in this world. I mean, you know, you know we've we've spoken on in other places, you know, about the fact that um we're not going to give developers who are like they've got a job, they need to keep a job. no one's going to be judgmental about that kind of situation.
Speaker: You know, if you're kind of forced down a particular route to, you know, accept AI or to work with AI, then I think you've got to do what's necessary. You've got to be pragmatic, you know.
Speaker: It's not always possible just to um to react badly against that. I think there are lots of circumstances where people just have to be you know we we I think everyone's going to get some grace from from us about that. i don't think we're gonna we're going to say that we condemn you for it. or you know we think you're Obviously, it would be much better if we could all just resist and stop and stand up and fight and not accept these things. yeah um
Speaker: But there are real-world limitations. you know We've got to feed our families and, like you say, get health care and look after ourselves. Yeah. Yeah, when you said yeah get healthcare, I'm like, shit, I forgot that that's a thing in the US that you have to have a job to have.
Speaker: Fuck that. yeah How long have you lived in Sweden now? ah Long enough to be shocked by things like that. Like, I know it, right? Like, it's a thing that I know, um but it's just so foreign to me. I think I've been here for like 16 years, but I haven't lived in the U.S. since 2005, maybe, something like that.
Speaker: Yeah. It's been a long time. Yeah. Yeah, I think I'm still fresh from like the U.S. work environment, work culture sort of thing. Although no, my, my last, my last couple companies, or my last company was, was pretty great, but um but not not to like, blaze my last company, but they, yeah, like it's,
Speaker: think like I, and even when I was timing my, my move after Belgium, I was trying to time it. So like, I had like health insurance coverage, like yeah while I was packing and it's, and like just talking to my, my Belgian partner about this was, he was like, was like, what, what is happening? What you, what are you talking about? Yeah.
Speaker: um We're just like, we we got it like, my company got acquired. So then like our health insurance policies all changed. And like, yeah, like everyone's like, everyone's health insurance improvements went up. Like, and if you had a family, i think it went up by like thousands and it was just awful for people.
Speaker: As far as I know as well, there are the thing that's really weird to me, um coming from England and living in Belgium, is that there are certain like conditions that aren't covered by policies.
Speaker: and this is and And different companies will have different... um different do They will make different decisions about the but the conditions they will keep and also...
Speaker: Even different, if you if you go to hospital x versus hospital y you'll get different coverage and different. ah this It seems like it's just a hellscape. and the US?
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah, it it is. It's it's so like... Like I, I complain about Belgium. but First of all, I complain about Belgium all the time, like all the time.
Speaker: But then like when I go to the, like the doctors and I realized I don't have to like fish around for like my health insurance card and pray like I have like the one, like the right one. Or like when I go to like get my, or when I go to the dentist, I don't have to pick out like another health insurance card. And I just have like my ID and,
Speaker: cover everything and it works in every doctor's office unless they explicitly say like we don't take insurance like unless like there's like a private clinic and which they explicitly say and even so you might actually get a refund anyway like it it's just god we could oh my god whatever like i know can't move i can't move back like yeah yeah yeah i mean yeah i mean you go to the doctors and you pay four euros yeah god it's
Speaker: I have to pay $20. And i when I find that weird as well because i come from the UK and you don't pay anything. Right, right. Yeah. I have to pay 20 a visit, but then they cap at it at like 100 and something euros per year. So like every time after that. So it's also fun if you have like prescription medication, like every time you refill it, it gets cheaper and cheaper until like, you know, you refill in December and it's like, yeah, it's one euro. I mean, we don't use euros here. I'm just like converting from Swedish crowns to euros for the benefit of our audience who are
Speaker: of course, all know what a Euro is. What kind of you. I know. I'm so nice. But so, Joanne, on Elixir real quick, before we completely blow past that one, I'm just curious. So like,
Speaker: I also used Elixir for maybe a year. this i was using Clojure in between Ruby and Elixir, so I didn't just go straight. For people listening who don't know anything about Elixir, it's kind of... so it runs on the airline virtual machine, the Beam.
Speaker: But it is very heavily influenced by Ruby, like syntactically. It's it's very close to Ruby in many ways. ah But apparently, Jose Valim, the creator of it, was also very influenced by some of the ideas from Clojure.
Speaker: So it it's this cool kind of mashup. And i was like I found it extremely pleasant to work with. And I think it was like it's the only non-LISP that I've ever used where I've had like a genuinely great repl or like interactive development experience. so I just wanted to kind of gush a little and then ask you like how you found working with Elixir. like This was also after closure for you?
Speaker: this is Yeah, this was my last job before moving to Belgium okay yeah for about two and a half years. I also had a pretty good experience with eli Elixir. i i think I i didn't know that... ah the author like did pull from Clojure, but it makes a lot of sense because I basically wrote Elixir, how I would write Clojure, just without parentheses. And like i I also tried to... like I remember actually giving a talk about Clojure at my last company, um basically translating... like And the way I structured the talk was like translating Clojure, basically if i just talking about how I approach Elixir because I feel like
Speaker: Well, like, um we used Elixir mostly for Phoenix, and then yeah some of the newer stuff we were building used the live... I believe forgot that.
Speaker: The live reload, like, live view... Live here, was it? Okay. I know what you're talking Yes, yes. yeah um Like, the the fancy, like, um basically, like, reactive front-end. um But, ah yeah, like, so I think, like...
Speaker: a lot of people kind of came from Ruby and they just didn't have like the the sort of functional knowledge, like the, and it's because it's also like the syntactically, like really inspired by Ruby and very easy to work with and very easy to get started.
Speaker: um I think it's also maybe easier to like fall into the trap of maybe not writing things. Hmm. um Maybe Closure is the same way. Maybe I'm just... the Anyway, like i I was... Where am I going with this?
Speaker: I found it very pleasant to write. I do prefer Closure quite a bit. i think yeah's like I thought the REPL environment was a little bit lacking in Luxor, although not like not terrible, but thought it was...
Speaker: not as seem like it just like when once you have like REPL environment enclosure I feel like it's it's really hard to find that where or at least I haven't really found it where did you have a better experience with like the REPL Yeah, so like I used the whatever Emacs setup for Elixir was, and it was like it was great. like I could just evaluate code in my REPL the same way I would do in Clojure with CIDR. used CIDR as well.
Speaker: um But yeah, so I did, like it was so much better than any interactive programming experience I've had in any other like non-LISP. So that was what stood out to me.
Speaker: But I also love that like the standard library was super well designed. So Elixir only has thread first, right? But you never need you never need thread last because thread first is always the right thing.
Speaker: so like just that attention to detail. And I'm not trying to shit on Clojure here because i know that they have very specific design about like you know, whether you're dealing with the collection versus something, whether, you know, thread first or last, blah, blah, blah. So it's not like slapdash and closure, but that was just something that I still kind of remember from Elixir being so happy that thread first was always the thing I needed.
Speaker: Yes. I also found that, like, I found that difficult. I thought it would be a problem at first because I thought, oh, we're so close, but think, yeah, it is very, very well designed.
Speaker: to think what else ah sorry i mean the meta programming was a nightmare though that's why you need to be in lisp because like try and write a macro in elixir or ruby or whatever and you want to just like give up programming forever basically i never write macros you know there you go correct good choice good choice Yeah, I was going to say, what what about the the... Where was I going with this? um the Yeah, the functional programming aspect of things.
Speaker: um you know what What would you say... how would you just say would that compare you know in terms of like... Because I know that some functional programming languages are more heavily typed and they're more strict about um about things that get passed between the functions and how how easy it is to reuse functions and stuff. But how how did you find that with Alexia?
Speaker: it's It's also like a very, don't know. Actually, I think there might have been like dates to like their type. Yeah. system um since I to be honest I have not touched Elixir since I left my job sure sure but so I am a little out of date but it's also like Clojure where it's like functional in all the ways where it's like useful and then like, you know, it's not as like strictly typed as say like Apple or something. Right. It's just kind of like a very practical way.
Speaker: It's yeah. I think like the like 80% functional and then like 20% mutable for early, like 20%, like less not so functional and like maybe breaks a couple rules of functional programming just for practicality sake.
Speaker: There is like a type spec system. i I didn't really find it as as useful as Closure spec because they're like it's it's like static. it's like it It runs completely separately from your code.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But it's not like runtime, believe. Right. No, I think it's like just one of those things where you you like run the thing and it like it tells you if there are problems, but it it it doesn't have like that kind of relationship to your code. At least the thing I remember using, and this was 10 years ago. So maybe i'm maybe there's new stuff and it's awesome. and I'm just not up on it. that is the equivalent of i Sorry, John. to types in Elixir.
Speaker: but i think there has been like updates to like itpes in elixir i There was a blog post that came out saying vixar Elixir version 1.20 released, now a gradually typed language.
Speaker: Okay, but that's fine. I will not summarize that right now. No, okay. But I was going to say, do they have things like atoms or how do they deal with, because obviously Clojure has these mutable constructs, but they're specifically, know, they are restrict in terms of how you can change things.
Speaker: Well, with Elixir, it's like Erlang, so you basically have agents. So that that's how you typically... It's very Atom-like, but you just kind of like say something to the agent and the agent returns a version of itself with updated state or something like that. I'm not explaining it very well, but... I think that's... Also, oh my God, i do I not remember anything? Because i they don't have...
Speaker: was like, Clojure, I believe? Yeah. What Josh said. Yeah, it's effectively the same. Like, it's the same kind of programmer experience, though.
Speaker: Like, yeah. You don't, like, mutate stuff. Or, like, you can, but it's super hard. Like, then you have to use, like, debts, records, and stuff like that. Anyway, I guess this is not an Erlang Beam podcast, so we don't have to. I was just wondering what the general sort of affordances were.
Speaker: Yeah. It's awesome, actually. i really like the beam. I really like OTP, ah open telecom platform or whatever. Anyway, the airline stuff for building like distributed fault tolerant systems is like really, really good, actually.
Speaker: So forgetting the, uh, so probably should start thinking about wrapping up apart from anything else I've got, dinner late you know, it's getting late and I've got to have some dinner. God damn it. Um, so, uh, yeah, Joanne, sorry too to to be like that, but you know, um, I want to respect your time as well. You know, um,
Speaker: So you're currently working with Clojure, forgetting the AI sort of hype and all this other shit. What do you think about like, um or what what would you say your experience on a day-to-day with Clojure is these days? How are you kind of like, how you feeling it? Are you feeling good about Are you feeling not so great? what What's the kind of like final sort of things you might want to say about Clojure as we kind of bring this thing to a bit of a roundup?
Speaker: yeah um I work with Clojure day to day. I really enjoy the language. I feel like I really enjoy the developer experience with it.
Speaker: I guess...
Speaker: Yeah, I really like writing in it. i i do ah I've been writing a couple of like side projects, mostly in JavaScript. And i every time I work on the project, I'm like, why didn't get up ClojureScript on this project? this This would have made this a lot easier.
Speaker: And so every time like I leave Clojure, like when I was writing Elixir or when I was doing JavaScript, just like last weekend, i always come back to it. i think it's one of the most pleasant languages to work with. Yeah.
Speaker: think it's really well designed and I have felt this way since I started writing it. i sometimes get frustrated with like the ah sort of, I guess, lack of growth in the language um because i I do think a lot about my future a developer and like where I want to grow in my career. and Eventually I would like to work maybe in a place that is, you know, bigger than a small company. I do actually enjoy like working with a lot of people and feel like sometimes i get frustrated that like, and like I work in this language where that it just, I feel sometimes like you just have so many, like, I don't know where I'm going with this.
Speaker: was interviewing for like a company back in the States and like, you know i I did tell them like wrote closure and like they were kind of like a big financial company and I had to basically kind of spend a couple of days before my interview just like kind of getting like pythons and texts in my fingers because like I can't even work with this language that I love working with. And sometimes I get frustrated because I'm like, am am I really limiting like myself and my career options? Like, can I work in like different domains?
Speaker: Like I still want to do a lot in my career and I feel like lucky that I found this current job. I'm just, just like, I'm very emotional right now, but yeah, like I'm constantly thinking about like, you know, what do I,
Speaker: like career growth and like, because I kind of, but I'm just like, am I, am I limiting myself with this language or am or is it a good thing that i I specialize in this kind of like obscure language that most people just don't even know, like the other programmers that I meet don't even know. So I don't know. I have a lot of thoughts. I have a lot of emotions.
Speaker: I think that's really amazing. Go on. Sorry, ring go on. I was just going to say that um it's one of these strange things that um I think the the but the people that use Clojure in big companies tend to exist in kind of like labs within those big companies rather than it being a kind of mainstream language, which is a bit strange given the fact that like the Clojure home, if you like, is a multi-billion dollar bank in Brazil.
Speaker: where there thousands and thousands of programmers ah all in closure. And yet it seems to be like a complete aberration compared to the rest of the industry. And now that still strikes me as, you know,
Speaker: It's a bit inexplicable, you know? It's almost like they're, you know, and they're obviously very successful and they're doing very well with the language. It's not like it's hurting their business.
Speaker: So it's very strange that other financial institutions that need an audit trail, for example, anywhere that you need an audit trail, um these things, like if you use Clojure and Atomic, you basically get all that kind of stuff like in a box, wrapped up nice and nice and simple, especially in regulatory environments, just for free, you know?
Speaker: yeah um yeah So it's it's pretty incredible that this that this this model is not being like either replicated through word of mouth or, and you know I'm going to sort of bash a little bit on Nubank a little bit here, because I feel like they're not telling that story very well either. you know And I feel like it's in their interests,
Speaker: just like it was in Oracle's interests to buy Java, to buy Sun, because they wanted to keep Java alive. um They didn't want to see it go to IBM.
Speaker: But you know whoever. The main point is that um that you know companies that rely on this technology need the community and the the sort of um the the corporate environment to adopt it more and more, more and more heavily. And usually you would expect...
Speaker: I'm ranting a little bit now, but, you know, would you i would you would usually expect the sort of the place where it's most valued to have a marketing campaign around it, to have more kind of courage of their own convictions, because they're obviously enjoying it and benefiting from it. You know, so it's a bit strange to me that it's not sold more to these large-scale corporations,
Speaker: I don't feel like it's getting better. Like, I feel like this was a problem back in 2017 when I started. And it's, it feels like even a more of a problem now, like a lot of these early startups or like I have worked for another company that did closure that was all migrating away from it because it's just,
Speaker: hard to like Once you get past like a certain size, like if you need to have like you just kind of tap out of them you just basically care to every Clojure developer that is looking for a job, at and then you just can't find more people.
Speaker: Yeah, but the strategy is, or the strategy was for new bankers to set up a small training program, yeah to have a buddy program, to get people on board, because it's provably straightforward for a decent programmer to learn closure pretty quickly. Yeah, it's Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, that place where you and I both work, Joanne, but not at the same time, they did kind of the same thing, right? They they kind of hired up all the Clojure people in Berlin that weren't working for one of the other Clojure companies in Berlin. But then once they ran out of those, they started hiring kind of like JavaScript programmers. And they were able to, um you know, those people were able to learn ClojureScript, you know, in a reasonably short amount of time.
Speaker: So I guess like there is the issue about like speaking Clojure natively, so to speak. like There is an advantage to that, right? that it It takes some years to to learn how to speak Clojure natively.
Speaker: So I guess that's that's the kind of... um thing that you got to worry about when you're like training up, you know, if you have a critical mass of like experienced closure programmers, it's fine. Then you can kind of yeah like new bank did, you know, add on people at a ah reasonably, um,
Speaker: you know at a rate that doesn't kind of dilute everything. But I guess that's the problem. if you If you're like, oh, Clojure is great. We have like five Clojure programmers. Now we're going to hire 10 people and and teach them Clojure. I think that's where it's not going to work out so well.
Speaker: I think that's the risk that a lot of companies understand when they're choosing their their tech stack early on. I think the problem is that we don't have, ah in in this industry, we don't have what earlier industries had, which was an apprentice program.
Speaker: you know We don't have that kind of... um everything Everything should just be... everything Everyone seems to want everything for free. you know they want stuff and But the problem with that is that you end up with this you end up with the the lowest common denominator or not exactly the worst option that's available to you, but definitely not the best one.
Speaker: You just end up with kind of like the status quo, the de facto choice. Sure. And nobody if anything, if anything, to me, that's a kind of like the death of innovation.
Speaker: Yeah. You know, if we talk about like this industry as an innovative industry, it seems to be regressing in my opinion. Anyway, let's not get too cynical at the end of this. Yeah, we're not saying words to take us out. Yeah, real exactly. Holy shit.
Speaker: Gosh, no, i I had this nice thing to say about closure and then I went into my my mid-career crisis. Let's just say we enjoy it while it lasts. How about that? you know Yeah, yeah. Like like the planet, you know, we're just going to enjoy it while it lasts. Lord Almighty.
Speaker: Jesus, Ray, you're... Optimism is just brimming over here. i love it. Oh, yeah. love that Belgian team, the Belgian win. yeah Oh, yeah. Oh, my God. That's fun.
Speaker: Of course. ah Yeah, unfortunately you get into FIFA and all the corruption and you start getting problematic again. But, you know. no yeah know. Oh, God. Well, I mean, this was a great conversation, Joanne, except for, you know, the last three minutes where we just, we're all just sobbing here, you know.
Speaker: I think, honestly, you probably end up fine that this does chime quite well with the audience, to be completely honest. Yeah, yeah. I'm sorry. I, I, God, sorry. No, you have john you are, you are, you are hitting the zeitgeist. You really are, you know?
Speaker: Yeah, indeed. Indeed. think it's like, um, it, to be somewhat serious for a moment. Like, i do think it's really important though, that like,
Speaker: ah For people when they're feeling a bit discouraged to say so, right? Because like, yeah, definite sometimes, you know, on a, on a podcast or whatever, or, or even at work, like, you know, you want to put on this brave face and be like, yeah, you know, I'm enjoying my work, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker: But, uh, I mean, you know, sometimes we're not feeling i great about stuff. And I think like being willing to say it is important. I think especially with Clojure, it comes ah from a place of like, I truly do love this language. Like, I know don't.
Speaker: I get so, like we all get frustrated sometimes writing code. And I truly believe that like, am the least frustrated writing this language. that That also sounds very negative. But I also know a lot of people like in my circles who are no longer writing this language because they just couldn't find jobs in this language. And like, I, it's, it's kind of like, it's, it's sad. Like, I don't want, like, I want to see this language get more popular and I want to keep writing this for my career at least my career writing code wherever I end up. yeah
Speaker: Let's just leave it at that. That's really good. That's really good that's a good place to stop. Love it. Joanna, thank you really very much. It was an absolute pleasure. You better retake it since you then just got her name wrong. in that it's It's not Joanna. I'm sorry. It's Joanna.
Speaker: Did I say Joanna? You did. It's okay. It happens a lot. look Okay. Maybe you're just Italian. I mean, you know, maybe it's fun. Joanna. Okay. Right. Let's just retake that again. Look.
Speaker: Boom. bouncer kind fuck so shit You should all eat dinner. I'm sorry. yeah Thank you very much, Joanne, for coming on and sharing your thoughts and feelings. This is pretty important, I think, these days.
Speaker: um I really do feel like we have hit a zeitgeist in this in this episode. So thank you very much. Really appreciate it. Thank you for having me.
Speaker: Josh, you should come to Belgium. i i I have and I will again. In fact, luckily i have a good friend, won't say who, who lives in Levin or near Levin.
Speaker: I have two friends who live in Levin. You have two friends. Or three. Also, if you're in Bel... Sorry, I don't know why shouting. If anyone is listening Belgium, please come to our monthly meetups.
Speaker: You can find information in like the Clodurians Belgian Slack. we need We would like more people. and They're really fun. ah promise we don't get this sad.
Speaker: Yeah, it was it was great to meet you, Joanne. And i will I will see you, I'm sure, before too long at some of your related thingy in Belgium or else elsewhere. Cool. Thank you so much for having me Thank you for listening to this episode of Deaf End.
Speaker: And the awesome vegetarian music on the track is Melon Hamburger by Fitzgerald. And the show's audio is mixed by Walter Dullard. I'm pretty sure I butchered his name.
Speaker: Maybe you should insert your own name here, Dullard. louder If you'd like to support us, please do check out our Patreon page and you can show your appreciation to all the hard work on the lack of art that we're doing. And you can also catch up with either Ray with me for some unexplainable reasons you want to interact with us, then do check us out on Slack, we'll be doing Slack on Clojureverse or on Zulet or just at our Devin Podcast on Twitter or Twitter.
Speaker: well i mean you know we were talking, it's like like like late night radio DJs.
Speaker: Going back home on the 421. Yeah, I'm on my 18th cup of coffee just trying stay awake to bring you these smooth grooves all night long.
