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#95 Arne (aka plexus) and Heart of Clojure
1.2k Plays4 months ago
Arne takes us behind the scenes of organizing Heart of Clojure, also shares his experience of Clojure eco system, community.
If you haven't already don't forget to get tickets for https://2024.heartofclojure.eu and when you are there say hi to defn crew :)
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Transcript
Clojure Community Shifts
00:00:15
Speaker
So let's get started, maybe. I don't know. We'll see. We'll see what we get. We'll see where we end up. But I think most of the exciting stuff is happening in Belgium now. so their al So the center of gravity of closure has moved, shifted to Belgium. Is that like, is have I just like single-handedly moved to center of gravity of closure? I think I'm not i'm not that much of a heavyweight. I think when you left Germany, closure left Germany.
00:00:43
Speaker
Exactly. Yeah.
00:00:48
Speaker
but Berlin used to be the center of a gravity of closure. Now it's it's moved here and then. Well, maybe the heart of of closure. I feel like London is like where a lot of the stuff is happening these days, even though like I don't think the community is like super well connected, but there's a lot of... like you know There's like two two but is it two closure bags in London.
00:01:11
Speaker
Uh, yeah, there's one or something the Griffin, Griffin, Griffin, and, and there's another one. I keep forgetting the name. There's like three foot in licensed closure banks now. And two of them are in London. Oh, crew crew, crew like KRO or something like that. ah agree I didn't know that. yeah Well, I mean, they're probably local London online banks, maybe. But I think the fact that the London closure ions are like really consistent at publishing.
00:01:38
Speaker
video talks and from all ah from the whole community, not just London
Impact of COVID-19 on Tech Events
00:01:43
Speaker
developers. but yeah like that really yeah I think that's that's pretty impressive. I don't see any other Closure Group being so well organized. I know. yeah no it's It's really cool that it's really become like the main online venue where people can just go and give a talk.
00:02:03
Speaker
You know, and it could have been like anywhere, right? Cause like, it's really just like at this point, it's really just sort of like an online meetup. I mean, they have like in-person meetups too. They still do the dojos and stuff, but I think it's actually kind of like different people organizing those. You mean the local ones and the remote ones. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But it's nice that they're carrying the, what do you call that? They're carrying the torch and then.
00:02:29
Speaker
continuing that one. But there is not much activity in the rest of the world, I think. I don't know. We need to see we need to see what what people are up to these days. it's been yeah yeah there There is definitely a thing that like...
00:02:45
Speaker
Just in general, like tech communities in general, like a lot of the grassroots stuff, like COVID really yeah yeah what took took ah took a big hit and and like, we' we're nowhere near the levels we were, you know, like 2019 and earlier. I mean, I think the European conference scene was like, there was at least half of it is in conferences in Europe, you know? yeah And, um,
00:03:13
Speaker
i don't I mean, I know obviously we can argue about adoption rates and stuff like that, but I thought' i don't really feel like it's changed that much. It's just like you say, Anna, I think it's mostly just the fact that you know once people got out of the habit of organizing these conferences on a kind of annual basis,
00:03:31
Speaker
or biannual basis. Is biannual every two years? I can't remember biannual. I think it means both. I think it means both. Yeah, probably. Well, one of the, one of the ones where it's every two years rather than twice a
Conference Organization Challenges
00:03:42
Speaker
year. But I think from the context, you mean it's every two years now, which used to happen two times a year. It's still biannual.
00:03:52
Speaker
Anyway, I mean, people got a habit of it because of the pandemic and then, you know, like everyone maybe is mixed. And I don't know, I guess you make choices. I mean, I guess it's interesting to think about what your choice was on it. Cause I know that after the first part of closure, which was an amazing success, definitely by the way, kudos for that. I think that was wonderful, but I know you kind of wanted to take a break and, um, yeah because it was a lot of work.
00:04:21
Speaker
it It was a lot of work, and i was I was very tired after the first Heart of Closure. I was also like looking at some of the pictures there. There's this one picture I just chatted recently on Clojurians in the Heart of Closure channel of me holding up this box of waffles. yeah And if you look at my face, it's like I'm like emaciated. and like like this you know just like i'm like I'm excited. I'm still i'm still there, but like I probably had like slept like four hours or something. ah You know, I was, I was wrecked. Um, and I, I, a couple of things happened. I think first of all, like, just, you know, like time passes and you kind of forget, uh, you know, the annoying bits. Um, like having a baby.
00:05:05
Speaker
Yeah, i think I think it's a general human thing, you know, that it's like, with with things like that, which like, yeah, there's like, obviously, there's also a lot of, you know, positive, like, um it was, ah it was a hugely successful success event, like you said, like, people really loved it, it got so much positive feedback. ah And so, you know, like, over time, that stays, because people also keep reminding you of that, you know, oh, you know, Heart of Closure was so great, when are you doing it again?
00:05:31
Speaker
Yeah. And all that, you know, sweat and tears, like that year of buildup and all the stress around it kind of like, yeah, like fizzles out over time. Um, but what really happened was like,
Heart of Clojure Event Revival
00:05:47
Speaker
you know, ah heart of closure was also the the first year that I had founded Guy One. So like Guy One's my company, right? Like, so like at the time,
00:05:57
Speaker
i was I was getting more client work. I basically had more client work than I could do. That was one thing. I had done Lambda Island for a while, which was just like me solo everything. And I really burned out on that and I was like, okay, you know like I no longer want to do just like stuff all by myself. And then Martin and I, Martin Klebsch, we were talking about this conference.
00:06:21
Speaker
which then became Heart of Closure. And so it was like, okay, you know like maybe now is the time to actually set up a company, then we can immediately run Heart of Closure with the company and I can actually start building out a team. And so that's five years ago. At that point, I still didn't know what I was doing with Guy1, right? But now we're like we're a few years further on.
00:06:44
Speaker
We have a bit of a team, like people who've been around for a couple of years. It's a bit, even though it's been a a rough year too, you know, just with the economic situation and everything, but like, you know, there's a bit more of a process. It's a bit more stable and there was an appetite within the team to do some kind of event.
00:07:03
Speaker
And actually there's a really nice venue here in my hometown. So I'm in Arskold, which is like 15 minutes from Löwe. And there's a really nice venue here. It's not big, but you can seat maybe a hundred people.
00:07:17
Speaker
And we were thinking of doing like a guy one birthday party event, sort of like a mini conference, mostly by invitation. um You know, I had some cool ideas around that.
00:07:33
Speaker
um But then, yeah, we actually started discussing, okay, like if we're going to do an event, is that what we really want to do? And then we also started thinking about, okay, well, you know, there's been discussion for years of bringing back euro closure or or something like euro closure. yeah um So then we would start thinking about, okay, you know, like, should we actually just do a euro closure? And then, I don't know, I think Bettina, like my co-CEO, she was, I think she said, it was like, okay, but then why don't we do like heart of closure again?
00:08:06
Speaker
And, and yeah, like it turned out that like that, like when we really like, you know, like looked inward and thought about it and like saw how we felt it was like, okay, well, you know, like maybe, maybe like in a couple of years, we'd be happy to like support and help organize something like a Euro closure. But we haven't really done any event yet with this team.
00:08:29
Speaker
You know, let's actually do heart of closure again, but like really with the team that we have now, um, and then kind of see how we feel about that. Yeah. Yeah. And so that's, yeah, that's, that's how we decided to do heart of closure again.
Heart vs. Euro Clojure
00:08:44
Speaker
How would you like, maybe as I'm being a bit naive here, but how would you distinguish a Euro closure event from a heart of closure event? Um, I think.
00:08:57
Speaker
I mean, heart of closure is, is really my baby, right? Like it's like, it's a very particular thing. Um, you know, and like, I'm, I'm very opinionated and stubborn. Um, and, and like ah a lot of my work too, like people who work with me closely for a while, they they might start to see this that like, you know, also a lot of the open source stuff I do, it's really born out of just frustration.
00:09:27
Speaker
You know, it's just like seeing stuff in the world and, you know, just feeling like, ah you know, like people, you know, this is not how you do it. see Okay. And then just, you know, I'll just, I'll just have to do it myself.
00:09:40
Speaker
um And so you know that's how a lot of my open source comes to be. And that's also, I think, to an extent how hard of closure came to be. um And so I think like a Europe closure, it would be much more about you know like let's collaborate with these different you know like the people from Finland, the people from Berlin, the people from London, kind of see how we can form a team together. And it would probably be much more like a traditional conference where you get more like you know a typical conference venue.
00:10:11
Speaker
ah probably more technical talks, I imagine, like Heart of Closure. we I mean, this time we have a bit more technical talks again, but mostly we mostly want to emphasize non-technical talks more about you know the human side, creative stuff, experience reports. you know That's the heart, right? That's the heart of Heart of Closure. yeah And so these are like all particular choices that like I'm happy to make for my conference.
00:10:37
Speaker
But I don't know if that's like the choices you would make if you're sort of like as a committee organizing a euro closure. Yeah. It's always a challenging thing, right? Because every conference that I've been to, that the organizers have, they stamp on it. They show something. And for me, euro closure was more... Euro closure was always part of the Cognitex slash New Bank or whatever. I think that it's part of the bigger closure closure core event, right? Well, it wasn't always, right? You know, not initially, not the first couple of months, I think later. I think the the last one we had it in Bratislava, I think that was mainly by um by Alex. And I think I forgot the person's name. Yeah, so they mean architect bought it. Yeah, because i don' I don't know who it originally started. But I know like,
00:11:29
Speaker
It was someone, you know, just like taking the initiative initially by themselves. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Was Brother Slava really the last one? Because that was 2016, because I still wear the t-shirt sometimes.
Financial Realities of Conferences
00:11:40
Speaker
It's like your pleasure. Maybe there is one in Barcelona, which I didn't go to. Probably that's the... No, Barcelona was earlier. I think there was one more in Berlin. Was that after? I think that might have been after Brother Slava. Hmm. I don't know. Because I remember going to Brother Slava. I think you're right, yeah. Yeah.
00:11:57
Speaker
But it's a bit weird in Berlin because you have the closure D as well. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. yeah Closure D is, uh, it seems like, uh, cause cause closure D is, is doktronic, right? Like, but, but really it was like Ingo and Sandra. yeah Um, and it seems like Sandra no longer works with doktronic and, and she really.
00:12:22
Speaker
You know, the all and all the all the behind the scenes, you know, yeah but if you see, I think every, every conference, uh, I can, I think coming from, you know, previous life of but running a conference, I can see like every conference has like hand handful of people who basically putting all their.
00:12:41
Speaker
effort and time and then that that's the thing, right? Because these conferences are not like old Java world or reinvent that there is a marketing team, there is this and huge amount of investment and everything, especially given given the niche closure operates them. I think now we can say that after almost 15 years now, we've reached some sort of a nice equilibrium that this is this is where you know we are at in the in the programming languages. I don't know, chart or a map.
00:13:11
Speaker
but every Every conference, if you see, for example, you know, stuff that is happening in the UK is most probably Jexxed folks putting their time in ah XtCon for a few other things. Yeah, there's Xt in there, but like ReClosure is the really, the thing is like, you know, Dutch Closure Days, ReClosure, Closure D, yeah Closure Tre, like all of these, yeah you know, they're all in the ballpark of, you know, somewhere between free and like at most a couple hundred euros for a thing. Yes.
00:13:41
Speaker
Yeah, which means that these are like, even though, you know, say closure traits organized by me to sin. Yeah, but really, it's a community conference. Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course. I mean, you know, what i'm saying like it's not yeah it was never like a profit thingy or whatever, um because I remember when when these city discussions were happening,
00:13:58
Speaker
I think at least one or two times we were so strapped with money and everything like maybe we should just ask at least five euro from everybody you know and I was very adamant that no you know let's keep it free because at the same time like the JavaScript conferences and it seems ages ago now ten years ago like 800, 900 euros. And from ah from our point of view, it was like, we are asking people to come to Amsterdam, which is already expensive, stay in Amsterdam, which is already expensive. Now, if we add up to that, and most of the people at that time, if it's coming to closer conferences are are, you know, hobbyists are who want to learn about the language. And it was never approved by their whatever the fucking managerial hierarchy.
00:14:39
Speaker
that they work under. So it's it's always been a challenging thing for for approving this one. right If you go to Java, well, if you go to, I don't know, re-invent or something, if you go to one of these fancy things, then it's part of your mainstream work. Yeah. yeah yeah But that's the thing, right? like If you really want to make money on a conference, yeah, you need to charge 1,000 euros for a ticket. Exactly. We already tripled our ticket price. um you know Last time, we were around 100 euros, now we're around 300 euros. Yeah.
00:15:08
Speaker
But we're also like, we got two venues now. We got many more speakers. You know, we were just looking at the price for the hotel. It's going to be a like, of everything is crazy. Yeah. Like, you know, with like more speakers. Also, I think last time for a lot of speakers, we only paid two nights. Like this time I was like, okay, no, we paid three nights for everyone. But yeah, so hotels gotten two times more expensive venues, gotten three times more expensive because we have two of them. And the second was much more expensive. Yeah. So.
00:15:34
Speaker
we We're still hoping to like make a little bit of a profit on it, like not counting any hours, obviously. If you actually would count out, it's maybe like five euros an hour that we're making on this. But we want to at least, you know like and and we're at the point where like it looks like we're like mostly out of the weeds in that like if we don't sell many more tickets, we'll probably break even. So now it's really about, okay, you know like can we can we A, like make a little bit of money on this, and B, can we you know get some more budget to actually do some nice things? yeah Make it make it you know like it's hard if closure is supposed to be like all this fringe stuff. you know Last time we had the screen printing.
00:16:16
Speaker
yeah We had gelato, we had waffles, these things, right? Like we need budget for those things. So people, you know, if you're on the fence, please get, get your ticket now. Yeah.
Value of Conference Interactions
00:16:26
Speaker
Yeah. yeah I think it's, it's really, but, but I think what I really appreciate is, you know, spending the the time that you're spending out of, you know, it's, it's out of love, right? It's not something that you're not, when you, when you start the conference, you're not thinking like, okay, how much profit can we make? It's about, okay, we want to get everybody together, you know,
00:16:45
Speaker
learn and share. I think that's the bigger aim for most of these conferences, at least in Closure. Yeah. It's really about bringing to people together. And then lately i've I've really been like you know telling people that like you know The people are the conference because if you think about it, like if you, if you do the the mental math, you know, like if, if everything that we do, you know, like renting the venue, getting the, you know, putting talks up, you know, getting like lunch, like yeah imagine if like, if none of that happened, but the same couple of hundred people would end up in love for the same three days. Yeah.
00:17:24
Speaker
That would be amazing. exactly you know like youd just like You'd meet up, you'd go to a bar somewhere, you'd you know talk closure, you'd have a great time. Whereas the audit if you you know if you put it the other way around, if like if none of the people show up, it doesn't matter how much of an amazing venue we have. You've got nothing. It's literally nothing. Yeah. No, but it it's it's really nice. I think that's the last time we had great experience. and it'd say it's It's also a nice way to discover a new city and then meet all the people that you' have been chatting online all the time. right for For whatever, I mean, the the general stereotypical, oh, we are always online and the technical people, we prefer to chat rather than and pick up the phone. and We have all these ah you know stereotypical things, but also the the nice atmosphere and then, oh yeah, I was talking to you on the
00:18:19
Speaker
on this channel or that channel that that that builds up the community right that that suddenly elevates the discussions as well. I think that's the that's the nice part that that we kind of missed in the last few years and this is a nice hopefully this is going to be a nice catalyst or you know maybe trigger for oh more people coming to closure, probably. I think maybe, maybe it's on on another note, one of the things that we talk about, like things being influenced by people and you know choices that you make, et cetera.
Diversity and Inclusivity Initiatives
00:18:51
Speaker
I think one of the, I mean, not to blow too much smoke up your ass, but I think one of the really nice things that you've done, Ana, is you've had a real focus on diversity and inclusivity, you know, and I think that's,
00:19:04
Speaker
You know, I think it's, it's, it can be done sometimes with a sort of like bureaucratic box ticking kind of approach, you know, which, um, which I find sort of pious or whatever, you know, it's a little bit, a little bit, not even pious, just a bit heartless, just a little bit like I'm doing it because yeah, I have to do it.
00:19:25
Speaker
But I know that from your perspective, and you know I get the real feels from you always that this is something which is really you know central to you and your mission in the company and in your life. you know So maybe let's talk a little bit about that because you know I think that's super important and a super important part of the of the of the conference. you know it it is um I do think it is, and and but it's but it's a really hard one. um you know like i I come from the Ruby community. right and like when i When I landed in Berlin you know in 2012,
00:20:01
Speaker
um i really like my first good friends I made there and and many of the friends that I kept over the years are old folks I met through through the Ruby meetups.
00:20:13
Speaker
um But then through those, I very quickly got involved with Rails Girls. And Rails Girls Berlin at the time was amazing. you know they had like They had a really good crew.
00:20:27
Speaker
and like I'd say at least three times a year, um, you know, they would do a free workshop, uh, for women to, uh, and, and sometimes it was even like two day workshops, uh, where yeah, basically you would like build a web app in a day, get it online on Heroku. Um, and the thing is that like.
00:20:50
Speaker
In those years, I've really seen the Ruby meetup just become so much more diverse. Um, like after a couple of years, you really saw it like, Oh, you know, there's like, there's so many women. And then of course, diversity is much more than, than just women, but but women for me are like, a good stuff.
00:21:09
Speaker
it's a good start because you know like half the population are women and and yet they're so incredibly underrepresented um and and yeah like you've really seen that difference and and we try to do a similar thing with that with closure bridge berlin so i was one of the folks who took the initiative for that and we actually it was like it was funny we had a
00:21:32
Speaker
we Apart from like the the workshops, also a lot of study groups spun out of Rails Girls Berlin. And so I was a coach at one of these study groups, the Ruby Monsters, um and met a lot of great folks there, folks that I'm still in touch with, and a few of us, um at some point, i was like I was starting to get into closure, I was starting to get into overtone, and so I showed this to a few folks, and they were like, okay, you know like yeah, let's let's do this.
00:22:01
Speaker
um And so, I mean, it was it was interesting. In the end, like, we but we bit off more than we could chew because we were like trying to learn, you know, like, emacs, overtone and closure, like all at the same time. You know, it was like going back between, oh, you know, these are like principles of sound design.
00:22:20
Speaker
And then, you know, this is this is how you write a left form. And then, you know, this is how you switch buffers. you know it's just like and Like, you know, it was like once a week. So like after a week that already forgot that everything is like cheats.
00:22:38
Speaker
But but like at one one of these money evening sessions, um we saw that folks somewhere in in West Berlin, it was not Cologne even, it was like, I don't even remember which city it was, but like some company there, a couple of folks there were doing a closure bridge. And we were like, no effing way. like There's a closure bridge in Germany and there's no closure bridge in Berlin. We're going to do closure bridge.
00:23:07
Speaker
Um, and so we ran closure bridge for a couple of years, but then, yeah, I mean, that was also super exhausting. And, and the thing with a lot of these things, you know, a lot of this community stuff is like, there's so much, like there's so many people that want to help. There's so many people that if you ask them, you know, do you want to volunteer? Do you want to do something? They're like, yeah, you know, like just tell me what to do. Um, but you, you need like one or two people who will say, okay, you know,
00:23:35
Speaker
Let's do a workshop in the fall. Let's go talk to these companies. Let's pick one of these weekends. you know Let's actually make it happen. You do this, you do that. you know We need to get in touch with those. Let's have a meeting every week on Tuesday. you know like Someone who's like who's the manager.
00:23:51
Speaker
you know who actually you or the producer, you know the person who like makes it all happen and and herds all the cats. yeah um And that's a very ungrateful role. like it's it's you know like It's extremely exhausting. um you're You're dealing with all people with a lot of goodwill, who are you know but they're all just volunteering and they probably have busy jobs.
00:24:11
Speaker
So a lot of them will end up to be flaky and unreliable. And you kind of just have to accept that and work around that. um But you're the one getting people like, you know, who are working in the same company, nine to five, same goal, same projects, getting them to work in the same direction is already a challenge enough when yeah you have people spread all over the place. And, you know, yeah, yeah, yeah. yeah So I did like the last couple once I was one of the folks, like sort of being the producer behind that. And then I was like, okay, you know, like I'm stepping down from that role. You know, whoever takes the initiative, I'm there to help. Yeah. But it's not going to be me. yeah And so then, and then the Closure Bridge Berlin just fizzled out. And yeah, like it saddens me, you know, because like I saw what like consistent efforts can do to your community.
00:25:03
Speaker
But yeah, we we just we haven't had that consistent effort in the Closure community. And and so we are, in comparison, a very non-diverse community on multiple axes. yeah um And so yeah, also for Heart of Closure, I mean, yeah, we have like opportunity grants, we have diversity tickets. we we But we we actually got, like we really had to like almost back people to apply.
00:25:27
Speaker
like we we like you know we like we We put that on the website, we announced it on on you know on our social media, mailing lists, tried to get the word out about it. and then like and In the end, like everyone just sort of like started you know just like texting people they knew who might qualify. It's like, hey, you know like if you're interested, please apply.
00:25:50
Speaker
yeah um
00:25:53
Speaker
Yeah. So it's also a small, small community, right? Because I think it's, um, it's, it's like a cat and mouse problem. Not cat and mouse is a cat and mouse call is the catch 20. Sorry. Yeah. Chicken and egg. Yeah. Chicken and egg cat. The bus, the bus doesn't catch the cat. It would, it would work. No, I think, I think I was, I was thinking like Tom and Jerry, like a never ending chase. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. No, no. But I think it's, it's like the, the community.
Clojure's Future and Challenges
00:26:20
Speaker
is not that big enough to keep attracting or being in the radar of practically everybody. right that's there is There is not much of that one. And on the other hand, if the if these events don't happen, then there is no not enough noise on the interwebs for people to notice, hey, this is a ah really nice language, nice community. This is something that we need to learn or we we want to learn.
00:26:49
Speaker
Because at the end of the day, I think these days, if I if i see posts on Reddit or if I post on other people, there you know because I put my fingers into multiple pies, like SRE work, DevOps stuff, and then Closure, and then Data, and everything, and then Python. So everybody is like, oh, can I get a job with this thing? The the new people are always coming up with this this question.
00:27:10
Speaker
right And then the shitty part is that the biggest behemoth is, I will learn Nord because you can become a backend developer and front-end developer and react native developer. You can do everything. Well, we know all that stuff. That's basically shit. Yeah, but there is no... I will let you learn in a second, but come on. Yeah, but there is no... I don't know about all this. How would you solve this problem?
00:27:34
Speaker
You know, cause like people, you know, like, yeah, closure is a fairly small community, but I don't think that itself is like a valid excuse for, for not being more diverse. Uh, no, of course. yeah Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And the, yeah, there's also a lot of talk of, you know, like we need more, you know, beginner level materials and we need more. Yeah. Like people, you know, like jobs, you know, 20 iterations now. Yeah. Yeah. And I like.
00:28:00
Speaker
I am starting to come to the conclusion that like, you know, while all those things are good, you know, like, yeah, of course, you know, like people like me to have a good initial experience and so forth. But like, what we've, what we've been missing compared to, you know, like, say like Ruby or JavaScript or Rust. Like we just don't have enough people just being like gleefully happy and excited online. Yeah.
00:28:30
Speaker
You know, like people are just like, oh, you know, like this is the coolest shit. I love this. I'm going to share it. I'm going to write like, you know, like funny blog posts about it with lots of emotions because I just can't contain how cool I think this shit is. Like. Closure that is, is just too like. Like there's just too many. Yeah. Well, you know, I was going to say like old guys, but. Old grumpy people.
00:28:59
Speaker
No, but that is that is something that that's what I'm saying. The culture comes from top to bottom, right? I mean, the whole became fucking. I mean, you said it, but it's not wrong. What the fuck? Yeah. I mean, like that's that's how it comes out. Like why people when I worked inside Oracle, right? Nobody hates Oracle for people who are working there. Everybody hates because Larry Ellison is running that one because of the way that he is behaving for for what it's worth.
00:29:23
Speaker
Like everything is seen like that. And if I remember, you know, one of the programming language communities like Pearl used to be so fucking fun all the time because Larry Wall is fucking fun. Yeah, absolutely. And like, you know, guy like there is no question about it. The programming language that is just made to write poetry in. Yes, exactly. And I recently read a paper that you can prove that every paint splatter can be a valid Pearl program. Yes.
00:29:50
Speaker
that's That's the fun stuff. But at the same time, you're talking about rust, right? And and if you see the the the people who are in rust, and that's what they say, as as you're saying, like, hey, this is cool shit. This is nice. I just found these fun things. And I think we we I don't know, most of them not we, maybe me, you know, um as, as I become older, I get less excited about it. It's like the hitchhiker guy, you know, Douglas Adams court. like now Let me interrupt this, uh, winch fest with a sort of a bit of right. This is getting too much now.
00:30:21
Speaker
I mean, you know, I think, I think we look, we look at people like, uh, the bulk dudes and people like that. And they're really exciting. They're really doing some amazing stuff. You know, so let's not, let's not be too down on like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, wait, wait, wait, wait. So you're talking to a guy who ran free conference for five years and you're talking to a guy who is reviving and then ran one of the amazing conferences about it. I'm I mean, just trying to say that before we get into the total hole of depression here about how fucked up we all are, maybe we can just lift this up before we come out and let's just lift this up a little bit. It's not all doom and gloom. You're right, Jay Ray, but there's a couple of people like that that are big names that everybody knows and everybody looks up to, but there's not this
00:31:18
Speaker
you know, like grassroots, just like random individuals. And that's also, I mean, I think the web has also changed, you know, like yeah when I, when I was doing Ruby, yeah, like every day there it would be just, you know, some, some random person just like blogging about their, their stuff. And that like, you know, I don't know what people do. I guess they write like on medium or, or like on some other locked. Yeah.
00:31:43
Speaker
but But yeah, like that, you know, that that kind of stuff, like though they're really the, and and just, yeah, like bringing that out in to their friends and in their in their local communities. And Closure Camp, you know, like is is trying to do some of that stuff. um And I think it's amazing. i do You guys know about Closure Camp, right?
00:32:02
Speaker
I, well, it used to be called something else, didn't it? The closure clownage or clown clowns? The clown soul. The clown soul. Okay. Now I remember. Yeah. I was part of the original clown soul. Yeah. I don't know. I think it transitioned to a closure camp, but I kind of, I'd lost touch with it after the clown soul.
00:32:21
Speaker
so yeah they number client so branding maybe Maybe they should work more on on their marketing, but but they're doing great. you know they got like a ah it's ah It's still a relatively small, but it's an it's an active community. they like They meet regularly, they have like office hours. they have Um, and you know, with the console, I mean, it also, it also transformed a little bit. And I have to, I'm like, I'm not like the authoritative source of this because I'm only like, you know, watching from the sidelines. Um, but from my understanding, they, they actually try to focus more on, you know, encouraging like local
00:33:01
Speaker
local groups. yeah yeah you know like And that that's something that I like wanted to to do as well with with that whole thing for a long time. it's like you know like we weekend can Because the council was okay you know like, every every couple of weeks, yeah um the bunch of us was like you know like me, paul Paula, Daniel, ah Jordan, and then Mike.
00:33:23
Speaker
yep Basically go online, you know, on a Zoom call with whoever wants to join and we would answer questions and, you know, just talk shop and, and we try, you know, we made it fun, right? We would have like funny hats. and it was nice yes But, but yeah, like I, I, I would like to see something that scales more. And so like, I also like when I was still involved, like tried to get these ideas in and it seems like afterwards they kind of adopted some of that stuff of like, you know,
00:33:49
Speaker
prepare the materials and prepare the framework and sort of be a matchmaker for, for coaches and learners to find each other and form their own groups and then kind of guide them with like, okay, well, how do we run this now? yeah You know, and really this, this also like harkens back to the whole rails girls thing, right? So like rails girls, they would have these workshops two or three times a year. And at the end of the workshop, they would ask, okay, well, do you want to, do you want to keep going?
00:34:18
Speaker
And then they would kind of like figure out, you know, like, okay, well, these people want to keep going. These coaches are interested to form a new group. And then like every single time, like one or two new groups would form. yeah And so the Ruby monsters were the first, but then you had like, I know you had to, they're Ruby corns, I think. And there were like, there were a whole bunch. Um, and so that, that idea, you know, like, and I'd still, I don't know, we'll see, like, I'm going to take a good break after heart of closure. And I i need to like.
00:34:49
Speaker
I'm not good at saying no and that that's a real problem. And I will really like also like with guy one, I'm doing way too much, like way more than I should be doing. But yeah, like I,
00:35:02
Speaker
I'm no longer part of, or like I dropped out of the council mainly because everyone else was North America. Right. Right. And so we, you know, like we had these calls, I think like every, every week or every two weeks. And it was always late in the evening here and it was just tiring. yeah Um,
00:35:19
Speaker
But, uh, but yeah, I don't know. Maybe, maybe when the dust has had one heart of closure, I'll like found a a European chapter yeah because because that's the stuff I still believe in. You know, like if it's like, yeah, if you want to, if you want to encourage that kind of diversity, I think things like that really help to have these specific spaces that just have a different vibe from the overall community where these people who are like, you know, cause like, I think sometimes people struggle to like find,
00:35:50
Speaker
places and people to relate to, you know, I think like something like closure verse or plagiar in Slack. Like there's probably a lot of lurkers on there, but we're just like, okay, you know, like I see all these like big names discussing in these channels, yeah but this doesn't really feel like a place where I'm going to find people like me. And so, yeah. Yeah. yeah That's always a challenge, but I think the, the, the main thing for me is that the,
00:36:19
Speaker
The spirit is there, right? That's the reason why you see ah people longing for conference like Heart of Closure, that there is and still people waiting for, oh, is there ah is there an opportunity for me to you know bond or or join the community to see what else is happening? I think that's ah that's a nice, yeah if it is not there, then you would, you know because you have the pulse in the and the community you know way way more. So you you know that anyway.
00:36:42
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. But coming back to the whinging, I mean, you know, of course we can know we can always say we can always kind of like um look to, you know, some of the folks, and Rich especially is a bit of a curmudgeon, I think. But in the end, you know, um He's retired now, you know, and I think the um people like Alex officially or I thought he's he' still going to spend time on. I think it's retired from a new bank. And yeah yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. But he said he's going to just focus on spending more time with his children, which is meant to be closure, but who knows what's going on there? He's one of the keys one one of his kids. Yeah. But, um, you know, and good luck to the blog, but you know, it would be.
00:37:26
Speaker
It seems like Alex and Forgus are doing good work in 112, so there is some positive stuff coming out of it. I think it felt a little bit like it was in the doldrums, at least for me. It felt like 111 especially was a bit of a nothing burger, and 112 looks like it's going to be pretty huge, you know so it's a pretty big step forward.
00:37:47
Speaker
um which There is good stuff in there, yeah a lot of stuff that yeah should have been fixed a long time ago, just these like little sharp edges. you know so yeah well Some of the big stuff, i mean the whole kind of like all this Java Interop stuff, that's pretty pretty huge. you know i think um and I'm not saying it shouldn't have been done a while ago. but i'm I'm agreeing with you on that, but I think it's not just small stuff anymore. I think it's you know pretty pretty big.
00:38:13
Speaker
yeah i mean i guess like like
00:38:17
Speaker
For me, in my mind, it's like it's like small stuff because I only do so much Java interrupts. So it's these it's things that i just I need every now and then. And when I need them, it's great that they're there. yeah yeah but But you're true you're right. you know like there's like there's There's big engineering behind these things. And it's it's you know it's it's good good and impressive work. Yeah. i mean you know um And so so that really feels like they're kind of like fire firing up again.
00:38:43
Speaker
you know They're firing up the kind of motors to keep on going because know I spoke with some people a year or two ago, and it was like, what the fuck is going on? you know what It seems like everything has just stopped. There's no spec 2, there's no this, there's no that. Nothing's coming through. Everything is like kind of like... back we should well that's a bit of an and i do That is a bit of an embarrassment. I don't know if it's ever going to be out of all five this point. Yeah, who cares really? I mean, yeah, I think it's it's like you say it to be honest. There's no hope for it, but ah but it's actually still quite useful too. But um but anyway, you know the point the point is that it kind of felt like it was like definitely like, wouldn't seem to say costing. It was sort of like, it was kind of like, um
00:39:28
Speaker
like going down because you know java was getting more and more functional and more and more kind of usable actually, um but isn't isn't this something that
Clojure's Adoption and Perception
00:39:39
Speaker
that eventually all languages should do right when. Because closure brought some mindset and i'm not saying you know it's. it's it It has reached a critical mass. It's not going to be one of those languages that showed up for some time and then just disappear. It has reached a critical mass. It's been in production. Well, i so my my point is that's not true, you see, because um I think if if you if you don't keep up with the underlying like virtual machine, the operating system, the underlying things, then I think you lose relevance. you know um yeah And I think to the point of that um I was trying to make, trying to land on, was that
00:40:14
Speaker
you know I think if you want to attract people to the to the community it needs to it needs to prove it needs to prove it's worth it needs to be value adding needs to be fairly smooth to do all the things you want to do and yeah you know there was a lot of stuff that suddenly became hard interrupt became hard.
00:40:32
Speaker
It became kind of like annoying. And that's the just stuff that just puts you off, you know, because you can't use the libraries or you you can use them, but it's like, like this much code, you know? Yeah, yeah. like but for For the so non viewer, that's a lot of like, it's a big bucket of code. You know, that's not what closure is meant to be, you know? So I think, you know, well, like, you know,
00:40:58
Speaker
The center is doing some good things to do that and Borg is doing some good things. you know I think conferences and these online things, they're also a way of making it relevant, keeping it relevant. so and i think that's you know I really appreciate you doing that, I've got to say. It's kind of like economics, right? like It doesn't matter if closure is actually more popular than in the past. What matters is like that it has the perception that it is. Hmm. You know, it's like, follow like but okay but well, because it's a self-fulfilling prophecy, you know, like if people feel that closure is like popular and it's, you know, it's going to stick around, that it is that stick then it's going to stick around. yeah And if, if people are convinced that it's, you know, like no one's doing it anymore and it's dying, then it's going to die. Yeah.
00:41:50
Speaker
ah Yeah, I mean, okay. um ah it' kind of like The problem with that is that like, I mean, you know, like, the I'm kind of like, completely, I think that the stock market seems to be mostly detached from reality these days. But I take your point that real economics, you know, is somehow linked to perceptions as well as, you know, pure bullshit that these markets are doing. Yeah, I mean, because I'm, I'm, you know, I'm not uh, part of the closure company, but I do have some side projects and other shit that I do. But from your point of view, you know, running a company.
00:42:28
Speaker
that's primarily doing closure work or maybe you know only closure work. So you you have the pulse on the quote unquote business side of the closure thing. So how do you see that? Because it's been almost, I would say six, seven years. I think you've been doing consulting before that already. ah Yeah. I mean, I've been doing closure consulting yeah for at least seven, eight years. I've been doing guy one for five. Yeah.
00:42:53
Speaker
um I mean, it's really hard, right? Like it's really hard for us even to judge, um, because, you know, we're, we're small enough that it's all anecdotal, you know, like we, we gain or we lose, yeah you know, like between one and three clients a year. Right. And it's like, you know, it's always some kind of coincidence of running into the right people. So it's impossible to really like say anything statistically relevant about that. yeah Um,
00:43:25
Speaker
I mean, you know, talk to folks at XE 24 and like generally, you know, like I said, you know, like the crew and New Bank and Griffin and some of you know our clients and former clients that are doing cool stuff. I mean, I do think, you know, like there's.
00:43:42
Speaker
there's there's There's a lot of closure around. you know There's a lot of companies that did do build on it. um I don't have the feeling that it's that it's shrinking or dying or anything like that. I do think it's a healthy ecosystem.
00:43:56
Speaker
um It's been a tough year. I mean, I hear similar signals from other, um, you know, closure consultancies in Europe yeah that, but, but, you know, that's just it in general, like all budgets have been frozen for, you know, the last 12 months plus. Uh, and, and it's been same for us. Like we have one big client that we're very grateful for and currently they're, they're keeping us afloat. Um, but everyone else has, uh, you know, like shrunk their budgets. They're like, okay.
00:44:27
Speaker
Where we like, they're basically, you know, like on, on some kind of retainer, we tell them, okay, you know, this is like our smallest, our medium and our like large retainer package. yeah And they're like, okay, can we go like way below that smallest one? Yeah, but it's probably mostly, as you said, like industry level thing, then a reflection on specifically on, on, on the language. Exactly. But, ah but, but my, you know, like generally speaking, I will say like,
00:44:57
Speaker
the pattern that I kind of see, like, I think, you know, like something like a Rust or a JS or, you know, these are like, general trends that that people hop onto and that like multiple people in a company, you know, sometimes even from the investors down, it's just like, okay, you know, this is the obvious option, you know, yeah you're doing something with ops automation, you know, like, maybe you're doing it in Go, because that's, you know, just a lot of people seem to agree that that's like the obvious choice. Yeah. um And closure,
00:45:33
Speaker
it like Companies that really build on Closure, it's usually like a CTO who you know truly believes that this is superior technology. Yeah. So there is a champion for the language. Yeah. There's a, there's a true champion and that's like, you know, that's really sort of the pattern. And that's also sort of what we're trying to start to realize, you know, in doing sales that, you know, this like traditional, you know, sales funnel, trying to find companies and, you know, just like bulk contacting them. And yeah it doesn't really work for us. You know, what's worked, what works for us is like finding those champions and becoming buddies with them.
00:46:14
Speaker
Right, right. Yeah, because it's not something that's good. Get them all in a conference somewhere. It could be a good idea, you know? Yeah. But that's the thing, isn't it? I mean, you know, hopefully there will be some business done at the heart of closure, you know? Because people will come together. I think that's one of the most special things, you know, or one of the most gratifying things for me to think about and to realize that, like,
00:46:42
Speaker
There's going to be stuff happening there. There's going to be connections made there that are really going to alter like the trajectory of people's lives. yeah yeah you know People are going to get jobs there. People are going to get business deals there. People are going to meet people there who they might have a job with years down the line. But that like is really impactful. um And that's that's really special. yeah But from the maybe not from the economics angle or the financial angle.
00:47:10
Speaker
When you, when you talk to these, these folks, you know, the, the, the people who are championing closure. So what do you see them get excited about? So, you know, people hear this kind of stuff. um I'm assuming there is a lot of non closure people who listen to deaf and obviously, you know, it says on the title, you know, it's like yeah i always, always first, first ah on, on our slash programming. Exactly. This is the, this is the place where they come forward. Okay. Okay. I want to, I want to know what this other stuff is about. Yeah.
00:47:39
Speaker
yeah yeah So what what do you see like from from those people getting you know ah making a choice that, OK, I'm going to go with closure? Or I'm not going to put any anchoring effort here. So please go ahead.
00:47:53
Speaker
um i mean like You're, you're, you're asking me like, why, why does champions yeah do what they do? Like, why do, why did you choose closure? yeah Um, I mean, it's actually, it it no, it is a good question because it's not an obvious answer. I mean, there are some obvious answers cause like we're all, you know, like and I sometimes feel a little like.
00:48:15
Speaker
in the closure community, like to everyone inside the closure community, it seems so obvious why you would do this because it's just, you know, like light years ahead of everything else, it seems.
Benefits of Functional Programming
00:48:27
Speaker
Um, and from outside of the closure community, it seems just bonkers that you would do it, you know, cause it just is like, such a nebulous ideas that yeah yeah, just alien and, and, you know, um,
00:48:41
Speaker
But no i have like really been like actually investigating almost like this this very question so for instance if you if you listen to some of the ah old interviews with with some of the new bank ah founders and like technical leadership. They really talk about you know how like.
00:49:00
Speaker
Closure is really great for their domain because it's so functional for starters. You know, so like all this money modeling as just pure functions and being able to test that all as pure functions um is is really great. I think, yeah, I mean, but but honestly, like, I think it's also often just people knowing the experience of like rebel driven development in this like interactive development and and being aware like just how fast you can move with that if if you do it properly. um Let me, cause I actually have some notes about this. Cause I'm really like, and it's not just closure, right? Like, like this is sort of like ah a question, like a thesis that are like, I'd like to further dig into like,
00:49:50
Speaker
what are What are the economic ah incentives for functional programming? yeah you know like cause like you can like If you really want to have this stuff, and like i do I think they're like there are like genuine advantages that you as a company can have by going with a a functional language.
00:50:13
Speaker
yeah that that that can appeal to the business, you know like but like we need that we need to tell that story. Yeah, I think the maybe it's a sacrilegious, but I know that a Standard Chartered maybe used to have or they still have their own Haskell compiler or something. like they They had a huge team doing Haskell in Singapore. I think especially in the financial domain, there is I think if you if you dig deeper, or you have a very specific type of case that you can make well i think i think the classic example of that is janet street is met with our camel yes yes and yeah um i mean that's and of course new bank the closure you know i mean yeah yeah this this is uh an amazing story really so maybe maybe that's where closure finds the killer quote-unquote killer application you know that weird thing up for me building la yeah i mean the weird thing for me about like the economics of closure
00:51:05
Speaker
When fundamentally, I think the economics of closure is that you can take a problem and have an answer for that problem with a team of two to four people, which would in another another language would but ah's say for about the same time, three to six months in another language would take like a team of eight to 10 people and and The problem there is that there's a kind of, you know with another Fred Brooks silver bullet thing, every time you have ah an extra person, you exponentially increase the amount of communication you need to deal with, the amount of process you need to deal with. um But somehow, there's a feeling, and like and again, I'm not quite sure, because I'm ah i'm with you, Arna, that the economics are a mystery to me as to why people
00:51:50
Speaker
Give me the fact that we know we know you know at least anecdotally and in in reality, in fact, in my own experience, I'm sure in yours, you can deliver more with less people with closure.
00:52:01
Speaker
um with fewer people, sorry, and with closure. But um but it seems like but like whenever I've been in a project, I start off a project and I'm at a company and I say, okay, we can do this thing in three to six months. And there's like one or two of us end up doing most of the work. um And then there suddenly increased the team to like four or six people and everything starts to slow down. um and And I,
00:52:29
Speaker
And I feel like there's a sort of bus factor problem. Almost. I think I feel like there's a management issue in the middle, in the middle layer of a lot of management environments. If they're like teams of like four to six people and not teams of two to three people. Do you know what I mean? Well, but the problem is that like the economics of it favor closure, but some of the organizational, the organizational, um,
00:52:58
Speaker
culture often disfavors that kind of bizarrely, that kind of efficiency and that kind of power. You know, that's my experience. Anyway, I don't know if you've, I mean, this could be a completely like random experience, but I think it's, it's, it's something that we've seen everywhere. Right. Because I think I feel like it's probably related to the idea that the longevity of the team.
00:53:23
Speaker
is very relevant from an organizational perspective. Like how, because, okay, I'm going to invest, you know, I'm going to make these two people build something. Those two people decide that, well, I'm done and I'm moving. Then I'm fucked, you know, like building the team. And the the reason why they have this redundancy is like seven people or four to six people or two kids a team, whatever.
00:53:45
Speaker
is to keep that control, probably, that next that gives you some sort of insurance. I suppose this was what I'm trying to say, and I'll obviously bring Arna in for his thoughts on this in a second. What I'm trying to say is that somehow at a certain, with a so with a small team, like literally two or three people, you can get a lot done.
00:54:05
Speaker
And once it goes to, if I was six people, I kind of, a lot of those gains are kind of lost. I feel, I don't know if that's actually true, but it feels a little bit like that anyway. honor Well, there's, yeah, there's, there's a big difference between a two or three people. Like you, you know, the, the charge about like number of connections between people, right? Like and with two people, there's one with three people, there's three yeah with six people. How many are there? Like.
00:54:33
Speaker
a hundred or something. six like Yeah, just exponentiates yeah that's right yeah it just it just blows up so quickly, right? Like it's like six people need to talk to five other people each. So it's like already like, I don't know. Um, so that, that means that like you, like, I don't think there's anything like per se wrong with a team of, of like five, six people. I think you can do great work with that, sure but you need much more of a management structure around it.
00:55:03
Speaker
You need a process to like make everyone work together. Whereas with two or three people. And I think that's like, I mean, that's also, you know, because closure yourself selects generally for more senior. And so I do think that is sort of like, I think it's, it's, it's partly a cultural thing that like a lot of closure stuff that gets delivered is an individual or two people or maybe three people.
00:55:31
Speaker
you know, because they're like eight or very senior, they can get a lot of stuff done by themselves. Be they're senior enough to just be self organized and self guiding. They don't, they don't need a lot of, you know, management and and steering. And so you can just give them a task and let them run with it. Um, and, and I think like those profiles,
00:55:55
Speaker
actually have a harder time than, than someone who's like less independent and less used to always doing that, like in a, in a five or six people team. Right? Like it's just, it's a different kind of profile, like people who really thrive in a six person team versus people who thrive as like, you know, two individuals with like very high level of, you know, executive decision-making.
00:56:19
Speaker
yeah and I'm wondering how that plays into the sort of like pitch for closure, as it were, whether you feel these two things are related or whether it's like, that that's kind of language agnostic. but so I'm trying to say that there is there is a kind of, I feel like there was a kind of bind there, but you know, maybe I'm wrong. Yeah, there is, you know, like it's really something to think about because like, you know, like a lot of
00:56:48
Speaker
Like if you're if you're hiring for closure, you know, like, and that's already like, it starts there, right? Cause like yeah the the whole counterpoint, cause you know, you can say, okay, you know, like you're, you're more, uh, efficient with closure. You can get, you know, go faster, get more done with closure. But the but the counterpoint is the labor arbitrage.
00:57:09
Speaker
you know Investors will tell you, no, you know you can't do it in Clojure. You have to do it in JavaScript because there's a million JavaScript developers. yeah We can push the price down and we can swap people out. you know It's going to be better in the long run. We can just treat people like cattle yeah um and that's what we want. yeah so that's That's already the first thing you need to you need to like fight against. um But then also, yeah, like when you're then than people who do go for Clojure,
00:57:37
Speaker
They very often say, well, you know, we're building out a closure team. We only want seniors. And you can kind of do that because in closure, there are more seniors. Yeah, compared to other. Compared to other ecosystems. It's not a good plan though. It's not a good plan, but it's understandable.
00:57:56
Speaker
um Right. And, and so that's one thing, but then, but then I think, yeah, you do, you do need to stick to a fairly small team and say like, okay, you know, like we're like, you know, three, four, maybe five people. Like I know, you know, like a couple companies like that, that very consciously make that decision. Like we are going to run for multiple years with less than a handful of people, but they're all very senior. They all work very independently. You know, that's our strategy. Yeah.
00:58:28
Speaker
But, but if you're going to have to scale beyond that, you know, that's going to be, that's going to be a really big shift. That's going to be tough. yeah If you want to, you know, like have more like a healthy, sustainable system that you.
00:58:43
Speaker
you know, from the get-go where it's like a mix of levels. Um, you're able to like scale teams up and down and and like have like a healthy, you know, where you're like training people internally, um, where you have some, some streamlined management process around delivery that people can kind of, you know, move into and not have to like reinvent it every single time. Like that's, that's more upfront work. Um,
00:59:14
Speaker
that that yeah, like a lot of technical leaders also just kind of don't necessarily feel like doing. yeah It's nice that closure is in the level where we are discussing these problems rather than you know like the initial hiccups of using a language or bringing a language into the thing. It's a really nice place. Yeah, I think what you're hinting at here, one is a bit like it's a bit like the sort of volunteering and management problem.
00:59:45
Speaker
And, and, and, you know, typically, I mean, and as a closure developer myself, you know, I don't want to manage people. I want to, I want to program things. And I, I've, I've seen a few people who were exclosures, reans become like team leaders and managers who don't commit that much code anymore. But it's not that often. It's not that, it's not that common. I feel, um, yeah.
01:00:10
Speaker
Yeah. and And we've, like, I mean, just, just among our clients, I've seen this now a couple times that like, you know, situations where you have ah a technical founder and and a non-technical founder, like a business business guy. Um, and so the technical cloud founder is like, you know, he's that closure champion, right? yeah He's like, he's all in on closure, which, and, and that makes him a great technical founder. Because he can crank out V1 on his own in a month.
01:00:39
Speaker
yeah ah you know and so But like these kind of folks, um when they like when then they start building out a team, de facto, they are expected to then be the the people who lead the technical team, who do the technical leadership.
01:00:58
Speaker
yeah And then they discovered that they're not that's just not their forte. yeah You know, cause it's, it's a lot of hats as a CTO, you know, like you'd like, there's, there's, there's actual like technical work you're probably still doing. Um, there's business level, like executive decision-making that you're involved in, yeah but then there's the technical leadership and like you these roles, they're often like much more, much stronger on the first two than on the, on the last one.
01:01:30
Speaker
Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think that's where the challenge is. I mean, I think but this is the sort of gap between the people like being being being able to make solutions that are really good really quickly in closure and this kind of um management level where the managers really understand the benefit of that. um Because I think a lot of managers and product owners and sort of people in mid-sized companies kind of don't want to think about the implementation details of languages or those
Clojure vs. Rails Frameworks
01:02:03
Speaker
kinds of things. They just want to, you know, they want this kind of, they want to believe that all these things ah that don't matter. They want to believe that things don't matter. You know, that Python and JavaScript enclosure are basically all just the same thing. You know, that you're in complete languages. Come on, you know, uh, and it's like, for me, it's like super frustrating for, I mean, I get why people feel, feel like that because they don't know, they don't know anything.
01:02:28
Speaker
I'm sorry to say it, but that we we haven't taught them it, or they haven't learned it. you know But something, there's always this desire, I think you were saying earlier on, DevOps has go, Rust has systems programming, and then but everything apparently now. It's ridiculous. I mean, it's an absolutely incredibly, you know a language which is going everywhere for no good reason, in my opinion.
01:02:56
Speaker
yeah um But Closure does have a speak a sweet spot among sort of like web web stuff, but then it's challenging with Rails, you know, which is much more, everything comes out of the box and it just kind of works. Yeah. Cause I have to say, and you know, like, like, so, okay, we're, we're building, um, like you remember last time we had this activities app at heart of Closure, right? Yeah.
01:03:25
Speaker
And it's a rails app, but it's like, it hasn't been maintained since like years before or hard of closure. And I'm not sure we would still be able to like run it like on, on their own. So, and there's also, you know, just some, some new cool things we want to do with that. So, so we're building one from scratch from closure and, you know, just setting up, you know, like.
01:03:54
Speaker
the web stuff, the middleware, some structure, you know, like your styles rendering, you're like your database, like secret management, like all this boilerplate. And there's like, I've, I've done this so many times now. yeah Biff, just go Biff. Honestly, I think Biff would get you everywhere. It gets you all those things. No, I ah It does, though. I mean, you know, in fairness, maybe it does. But like, you know, like we we have a very particular way of building our apps with Guy was of course. And so and so I really just like I need to sit down and actually turn that into like part library part templates.
01:04:44
Speaker
Right. So that, so that I can say, you know, like new, new you know, guy one new and be up and running. The thing is it it evolves. It constantly does evolve as well. And like, and there are like variations, like, you know, some of us, we do use the atomic, some of us, we don't use the atomic and so forth, you know? But, uh, but yeah, like we, we always have ornament in there these days, you know, like stuff like that. Like, and that's like a little bit of setup you need to do so. Yeah.
01:05:11
Speaker
need to sit down and that's and something we're working toward also with like with tea leaves and tea gardens like sharing more of that stuff and like being more explicit around our our you know our tooling and our setup. But I mean there is nothing it's not like Rails was the only you know ah thing in town at least in Ruby it was the big one but there is always, you know, having at least one or two things like in Python, for example, now there's just, I don't know, starlight or whatever, a couple of things. Yeah. I mean, Rails is just the one that like really was the first to really capture people, people's imagination. Yes. yeah Yeah. Yeah. There was like a, you know, right, right time, right place, people getting pissed with enterprise Java and everything. And then, and now we have this choice of so many things that Rails like.
01:05:59
Speaker
It's not that unique anymore, but if you're starting a new project now, every language has one these days. So Rails-like thing. Yeah. and And yeah, but yeah, like closures always like rejected this notion so hard. And yeah, like Biff has like, you know, gone against that grain and said like, no, you know what? Like, I know you all say you don't want this, but we're going to do it anyway. um And I salute that, you know, like, cause I don't think there's a, there's a place for that. um Yeah.
01:06:29
Speaker
But again, it's one guy doing it, you know, like DHH. Biff is the if it the closure DHH. I don't want to compare him with him. No, so he's way nicer. Yeah, that's an not a compliment. Actually these days, no, no. Now we know a bit more about that guy. Back in the day, maybe. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. yeah Sorry, Jacob. that I retract that seven. Why don't you edit this out? Because that's not nice.
01:06:58
Speaker
yeah but Yeah anyway yeah i mean this is all good i mean where will be anywhere with the ah one of things i was gonna ask you about this conference because i happen to know some of the venues um switching back and don't mind to that. Yeah absolutely yeah cuz i'd love to like say a bit more like talk a bit more about that cuz yeah like it's a.
01:07:17
Speaker
I mean, we'll see afterwards. We have to do the thing that you said we're not doing. It's fucking awesome.
Heart of Clojure Conference Logistics
01:07:24
Speaker
We need to tell people why this is fucking awesome and you should come to Heart of Closure because Lewin is fucking awesome. It is going to be fucking awesome. Do you have those two venues now, which is going to be really cool? yeah so yeah Double the fun. Ray, like you do you like you had a question, right? Or do you just want me to talk about the venues? Well, I mean well i know those venues as well. so yeah I just thought they're really cool and they're really interesting. so you know ah You've got more plans for them, so please have at it. you know
01:07:55
Speaker
Yes. Yeah. So let me, let me, okay. Let me talk to you through the venues because this is, this is, yeah, this is a big thing. So, okay. Last time we were at hall five. Um, so for people who don't know, basically you arrive at trace train station in Leuver. Uh, you take the tunnel underneath tracks, go to the backside of the station.
01:08:16
Speaker
walk another five minutes and you end up at this park. um And right next to the park, there's this big sort of like old brick industrial building um where they used to do like maintenance on trains and stuff.
01:08:32
Speaker
And so since yeah since since five, six years, it was it was fairly new when when we we did the conference. um It's sort of been a community thing, ah like a place where there's some some local restaurants in there, there's some local businesses in there, ah some volunteers that like keep the bar open. And then then the the second, like the big hall that's part of it, you can rent for events.
01:09:00
Speaker
And so it's a really cool space, really bright, like next to the park. um And so we had a great conference there. um And I think it's one of the things that really made Heart of Closure special is just, you know, the the vibe of that building. um But we had...
01:09:20
Speaker
Two problems there. And that's actually like one of the reasons why it took me so long to decide to come back with out of closure. Cause we had a little bit of like a, okay, you know, like an unresolved issue there. First of all, we were really at capacity. my So we, we allocated the total total of 250 tickets last time.
01:09:42
Speaker
And I think we even got a ah couple of no-shows, which in the end we were grateful for because the place was full. I mean, you know, like you guys remember, like the place was full. yeah yeah um The second thing is that we got like, well, at least one sponsor. You were also there as a sponsor, right, Vijay?
01:10:01
Speaker
I think the the company that I was consulting for, Flexiana, those guys were consulting. Kind of representing for Flexiana a little bit. Yeah. So so I don't know what Flexiana thought about it, but like we had at least one sponsor complain about the the location of the boots and that they didn't really have enough space and that ah like they should have been closer to coffee, where there's more foot folk. and but But yeah, like you know we have a it's like it's a i mean it's not a tiny venue, but it's not a huge venue. you know like We really had to like puzzle everything in there.
01:10:35
Speaker
um So you know like basically, like we really could use more space because we felt like we could go bigger, that we could sell more tickets. And we wanted to make sure that we had the room to give sponsors enough space and like really like let them shine.
01:10:55
Speaker
So we talked to different venues in Leuver. um Nothing really you know like seemed suitable. um And then, yeah, then we talked to Hetepo. But in Hetepo, like, Hetepo is bigger. Like, Hetepo is at the front of the station. So you arrive in Leuven train station, you take the tunnel, but you go the other way. You end up at the train station square, like the big square in front of the station, and then tucked in a corner,
01:11:24
Speaker
Once upon a time, there was like ah a movie theater there, and they turned that into a concert venue. and so this is This is one of the main concert venues of Leuven. Big names played there. It's really lovely inside. There's a bit of a bar, and then you have like this theater-style seating, and then you have a big pit and the stage.
01:11:47
Speaker
um and so We have oodles of plays there to seat people, Um, it's also like technically really well set up. So like, you know, at, at hall five, we, we struggled sometimes with like how bright the place was or like, you couldn't really see the projections very well. So the guy who did our sun and light, uh, on the, on the morning, I think like early, early the second day before people arrived, he like.
01:12:14
Speaker
without any like safety gear like climbed up to like attach additional curtains to like black outlets. It's like, Whereas, yeah, Hetepo is like properly dark. you know like We're not going to have any of those problems. um But Hetepo has kind of the opposite problem that we don't really have space there to do fringe stuff.
01:12:42
Speaker
There's a bit of a hallway and there's a bit of a bar, but there's not a lot of room outside of that venue space. And Hall of Closure is all about the stuff around it, the fringe activities, the community stuff. So then we thought, okay, well, how about we do both?
01:13:03
Speaker
um and And the plan first, well, we ah the first, the plan originally was to also like lean much more into like interactive sessions, you know, workshops and birds of a feather and, you know, these kinds of things. So then we we we, the plan was to have like talks in Hetepo in the morning of the first day until noon.
01:13:31
Speaker
And then afternoon of the second day, people split up across the two venues for, for these sessions. And then first half of the second day, we're still split between the two venues and then end of the the second days, second half of the second day, everyone comes together again in Hetepo, um, for sort of like closing keynotes and, you know, some more, more big talks. Hmm. And that's more or less what we ended up with, except that like we just didn't get enough sponsor and other like session submissions. We mostly just got you know regular talk submissions. And a lot of them were like really good talk submissions. So um we in the end, we do have a like a really full schedule like just with the talks already. And we're just going to have all of those at Hotepo.
01:14:25
Speaker
But then from noon day one until afternoon day two, we're also going to have stuff happening at hall five. It's going to be a bit split. yeah And so like the more general and more the, you know, the more the, the, the typical heart of closure talks and the keynotes and stuff, they're like in those spots where we expect everyone to be. in her depot Whereas when it's split, and it's going to be more like the technical talks and like the stuff that like.
01:14:55
Speaker
has like a dedicated niche audience, but like maybe not everyone is like that. into But so what what it's more and more and more turning into now is that like, Hall 5 is really going to be like community space. um but Like, i said I mean, using the phrase of like, it's like the reified hallway track. yeah And we're actually thinking of like, having our own because there's the Hall 5 bar.
01:15:22
Speaker
Um, but we're probably going to have like our own bar in the hall, like our own, like heart of closure cafe, and then sitting there, uh, workshop spaces. Um, we're probably going to do London hall five. We'll see, depending on the amount of tickets we sell, we might have to do like London two shifts. Um,
01:15:43
Speaker
ah But yeah, i the lunch was pretty, the the food was absolutely excellent last time as well. Yeah. Yeah. yeah we're We're a bit more limited there. So last time we basically could like bring in any, any caterer we wanted. Um, this time we have to work with, uh, basically the, the restaurants that are already in hall five. oh ki Right. Now they they do have like, there's a really great Palestinian place that does like, you know, fantastic falafel, fantastic hummus, you know, these kinds of things. So that's a great option. um There's a pizza place there. um But it's not just any pizza. This is like slow or like long fermented sourdough wood oven pi un pizza. Fancy pizza.
01:16:32
Speaker
Like it's like, you know, the, I don't know, what is it? Like the standard of pizza like ah closure closure standard of pizza. No, I don't know. And there's there's a, there's a, there's a bakery in there. We get like, there's some stuff we can get from the bakery and there's one place that's like, that's not technically in hall five. It's called content. It's like the store that does, um, like basically like package free, you know, sales of stuff.
01:17:00
Speaker
yeah yeah And they also do you know a certain amount of catering. um they're They're the most expensive options of all of these, but they're also the one that like seems to allow us to like at least offer something a little bit more diversified.
01:17:14
Speaker
and Because the pizza, I don't know, we haven't really made a full decision on on lunch yet. Like the pizza like is great, but I feel like I don't really want to like make like the lunch option pizza. Yeah. Yeah. Hmm. So the time-based thing as well. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, deacon they can do, they can do a lot of pizzas. Like we actually asked them, you know, like how many pizzas can you do in an hour? It's a surprising amount if they're, if they're prepared. Um, but yeah, like compared to the amazing, you know, like last time we had like,
01:17:46
Speaker
Indian and I think like maybe something Middle Eastern as well or something. Yeah. yeah So yeah, we'll see. We'll see what, uh, but, but yeah, lunch. That's also why we really like me to get a sense of like, you know, where we're gonna cap the ticket sales. Um, cause one issue we have is like, like we're thinking of going like up to 400 people. Like we're, we're not there yet. Like and and we might not sell that, but, um,
01:18:15
Speaker
you know, that like, that that will be like the hard cap. Like more realistic. Yeah. Yeah. I think, I think more realistically is probably going to end up around 300. Um,
01:18:28
Speaker
maybe a little over 300. But like we we have a ah limit on the amount of people that we can put in Hall of Five. I think it's actually less than 300. Basically, like what one of the reasons we're doing this split between the two venues and like making sure that we always have stuff happening in Hatepo is that we want to prevent everyone at the same time trying to get into Hall of Five.
01:18:53
Speaker
yeah yeah Because also, yeah, we're not like last time we see the 250 people, but we just had, you know, like rows of seats, like, you know, like really packed in. Now it's probably going to be more like round tables, like 10 people to a round table, something like that. So, so we'll probably have like, you know, a hundred seats in the main hall and then terrace outside and we'll have the long table. So we'll be able to see, you know, like a bunch of people, but probably not 300 at a time. Yeah. yeah It's really nice though. Yeah, I think its and think we are we are confident starved. and yeah yeah right now So it is going to be a really fucking awesome. I think it's a very exciting kind of like switch up as well because, you know, yeah it's this this kind of, this kind of like dual centered place with a lot more like explicitly community oriented things where there's some preparation done. I think that's, you know, pretty phenomenal. Yeah.
01:19:51
Speaker
Yeah, I like the idea. If you do need some help with that, Ana, ask Vijay. I mean, yeah, sure. no i'm like I'm going to be around as well, so I'll i'll hit you up in the back channel. Exactly, yeah. the then The guy who can just cycle there. Yeah, I know. I will. That's right. Yeah. He's just pulling in, yeah. On that note, Ray, do you have a selfie stick? A selfie stick? I don't know what it is, even.
01:20:21
Speaker
now No, this is this is the reason why we call Closure Community, old people. Oh, no, actually, I do know what you mean. This prologue extending thing. And old people use that, by the way, not you. Oh, they do, yeah. Come on. They'll have like an entire iPad saved there. I'm not defending yourself that you're an old guy. I don't get it. I'm an old fart, but you know that's for sure. but that ah That's not why I don't know about when a selfie stick is, but yeah. I can get one. I mean, they're pretty cheap.
01:20:51
Speaker
Oh, no, no, no. no i'll I'll ask around, but yeah. So, so, um, John john and Malcolm, uh, you know, the, the jugs guys, uh, in, in preparation of XC 24, they did this video where they like walk towards the venue and like oh while they're they're talking about the thing. So I was thinking maybe you and I could meet in Leuver and like walk from Huttepo to hall five.
01:21:16
Speaker
ah while I explain ah some ideas about the conference. yeah okay i good idea I don't have the, I don't have the selfie stick, but I have the memo thing, you know, the one that stabilizes your phone. oh That's even better, I think. But you need to really, well, it depends on the camera that you're using, but if you use a wide angle one, then it should be perfect for holding with the hand. but guess i should and We should actually just ask a third person to film us, I guess. yeah That's even easier. The dog agrees.
01:21:46
Speaker
Sorry. The nice thing about the selfie stick is you kind of know where you're going. Whereas the person in front is sort of like walking backwards. Then you need someone else to drive them as well. So you need to put them through now. We can take this conversation off. If you are listening to this, get a ticket to Heart of Closure. Bring a selfie stick.
01:22:15
Speaker
That would be nice. I think two luminars. I
Diversity Scholarships and Initiatives
01:22:18
Speaker
don't know. What is the, what is it called? Homonym? No. Demonym. The word for people from someplace. I don't know. What is lumen for? What is this? Luminars or? Luminars, yeah. So a couple of luminars talking about lumen and introducing the thing. That would be super cool. and Are they, are they the Kiki feathers? Or is that Brussels? I have no idea.
01:22:45
Speaker
Anyway, a lot a lot of a lot of cities in Belgium, they are in Flanders, like the the inhabitants have these nicknames. Oh, OK. So they don't ah they don't go by the city name, but there is something else. Yeah, like the like in Mexico, they're called the man of blisters like the that. It's from ah an old tale that the.
01:23:10
Speaker
the The moon was behind the the church, and they thought it was it was on fire. And so they they started like you know trying to put it out. And so they're like, as the the moon fire brigade, something like that.
01:23:25
Speaker
Okay. So, apparently, the Levonards, or Petermanas, or the Kujeshiters.
01:23:32
Speaker
Okay. Now you know. I think and think we'll we'll leave we'll leave that audience to look that one up and then history behind it. Maybe a nice story. um But hey, hey the I think the entire lineup is now announced, right? Or do you still have more and more? Yeah. Yeah. We have all 20 of them.
01:23:48
Speaker
Perfect. Yeah, it's looking it's looking pretty awesome. I think ah very as Ray was mentioned, like a diverse diverse set of topics, people, not just old hands, but also some new stuff to experience people. So it's really looking really, really good. So people who are who are listening to ah this podcast, I think if you're on the on the fence, you know, I think this is the place to be if you have anything to do with closure.
01:24:14
Speaker
whether you want to get started or whether you are an experienced person. So, yeah. but Yeah. I mean, this is one like people will be talking about this one for years and you will regret missing it. Exactly. Yeah. What's the story honor about diversity um diversity um tickets?
01:24:31
Speaker
Who qualifies for them? And, ah um you know, have you got any left and that kind of stuff or what's going on there? Uh, we don't really have any left. Um, we might still be able to give like tickets, um, if people contact us, uh, if, uh, but yeah, like, so we, we had full scholarships, basically like travel and hotel included. right nice um So basically we told people like when they buy their ticket, they can pitch in a little bit. yeah Um, and we match that. So we, we basically double what we get from, uh, from donations.
01:25:07
Speaker
And then based on that, we we buy, ah you know, playing our train tickets. um In the end, we were able to bring in three, three women. um one from Belgium, one from Netherlands, and one's coming from the States. um But she's also someone who's like really involved with ah with Closure Camp and and with like community stuff in general. yeah um So we thought it it would be like first that she's like very like deserving for everything she's done already. yeah And also that like, it would be great to have a little bit more like Closure Camp representation.
01:25:41
Speaker
i Um, but, but basically everyone who applied, um, will at least get a free ticket, like just a conference ticket. That's great. Yeah. Yeah. So don't, don't be scared about applying for that. you know Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we, we took the form offline. We're like, you know, cause it's also like as organizers, like at a certain point you need to like yeah wrap wrap things up so that you can like move on and do other stuff. yeah yeah Yeah. But like, if you are listening.
01:26:10
Speaker
You know, if you're a woman in tech, a person of color in tech, you know, if you're LGBTQ, you know, if like, if for some reason you're like, you consider yourself part of a group that's like, just not like, you don't see people like yourself in tech spaces and you want to come, but the cost of the ticket would make the difference if you come or not. Like just contact me through any channel and you'll get a ticket. Perfect. Yeah.
01:26:40
Speaker
super nice cool on that um i think we can wrap it up on that uh you know uplifting note hey yes yeah super cool enough it's it's I feel like we're you know like as much as this is a very free free form podcast that that is like a very often off topic, um I feel like we've got to some pretty interesting discussions all along. I think the whole podcast is off topic. I'm not sure if that's a compliment or an insult. Hey, we we take everything that says compliment.
01:27:16
Speaker
There is nothing that you can say that I'm going to take it as an insult. Yeah, absolutely. Good that is super good attitude. It's really nice, Arne. I think it's nice catching up with you and looking forward to meeting you folks in um in in Logan again.
01:27:32
Speaker
um I think I got one of the early bird tickets probably. I was just just jumping immediately when you when he announced it. So I'm happy to join and then meet other folks there. So if you're there, ah Ray and I will be there as well among, I think, other with other folks as well. So please come by and say hi. Yeah, we know we have we've not been like um doing Uh, we are, we are consistently irregular. So I think we're going to keep that. It's a mark of a professional keeping that popping up for special moments like this is exactly. good Yeah. Yeah. and Then you have to listen to us, especially because you know, there's an amazing conference coming up.
Final Conference Details and Wrap-up
01:28:12
Speaker
So the conference is heart of closure, heart of closure.eu. And you can find RNA.
01:28:19
Speaker
practically everywhere um but he's on um on closure and remind us of the dates honor just so we yeah i was just gonna say so it's the 18th and the 19th of september yeah that's a wednesday and a thursday so we did go for mid week days this time like was kind of a constraint of the venue ah So we didn't have a lot of say in the matter, but but yeah, those are the dates. It's happening in Löwe, which is a really short train ride from Brussels, like basically all the big Brussels stations and the Brussels airport are closed by. um There's direct trains from you know the Netherlands, France, Germany, ah you know and even beyond, like you can take a night train from Austria or, you know,
01:29:03
Speaker
The Channel Tunnel, the UK. The Channel Tunnel, yeah, absolutely. Even the Brexit can come. yeah i've I've taken it three three times in the last six months and it's it's very comfortable. yeah and And yeah, book like if you're listening to this, like book your travel now, um because because hotels like are already like noticeably getting less available in Löwe. And yeah, like train train and plane tickets are going up all the time. So you know get get your ticket, get your travel sorted, and don't miss it. Yeah. And amazing talks, already amazing lineup. So it's going to be a worth worth going to Löwe and then
01:29:43
Speaker
Meeting all the awesome closure people, because it's going to be awesome. a Thanks again, Ana. Thanks, Ana. Thanks for joining us. Thank you for listening to this episode of DeafN and the awesome vegetarian music on the track is Melon Hamburger by Pizzeri and the show's audio is mixed by Wouter Dallert. I'm pretty sure I butchered his name. um Maybe you should insert your own name here, Dallert. Wouter. 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 or the lack of hard work that we're doing.
01:30:20
Speaker
and you can also catch up with either Ray with me for some unexplainable reason you won't interact with us then do check us out on slack closure in slack or closure verse or on Zulep or just at us at Defn podcast on Twitter enjoy your day and see you in the next episode
01:31:17
Speaker
we We just record everything and then later figure out is there anything usable?