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Stuart Sierra

Personal blog · stuartsierra.comprogramming

Stuart Sierra's personal blog at stuartsierra.com covers programming. Since 2007, 51 different Hacker News readers have linked it 73 times, most often “Clojure Start Time in 2019”. The last post was in 2022, but the archive is still widely read.

Visit the blog
73mentions?
51HN people?
2007–2024first – last linked?
Links on Hacker News per year · peak 10 in 2013

Most-linked posts?

  1. Clojure Start Time in 2019
    6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2019-12-21
  2. Threading with Style
    3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2023-02-18
  3. Clojure Don'ts: Concat
    2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-11-22
  4. Clojure 2015 Year in Review
    2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2015-12-31
  5. Heating Up Clojure & Swing
    2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2010-01-07
  6. On the Perils of Dynamic Scope
    2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2013-04-01
  7. /2018/07/15/clojure-donts-thread-as
    2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2018-08-02
  8. Facebook's Thrift vs. Google's Protocol Buffers
    2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2008-07-12
  9. Apathy of the Commons
    2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2016-07-18
  10. The Reluctant Dictator
    2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2013-01-17

What Hacker News says?

  1. I agree with most of the recommendation in this article (thanks for publishing it!), but the advice about futures should be taken with a grain of salt. You need to be careful with futures because they swallow exceptions. However, the solution given (setting a global exceptions handler), while sound advice in general, doesn't actually solve the problem of hidden errors, as futures catch all exceptions and return them…

    Comment linking /2015/05/27/clojure-uncaught-exceptions

    on “Clojure, the Good Parts”
  2. Submitted Clojure 2014 Year in Review as a story · 261 points

    HN discussion
  3. Just to add some reference to why it can take a long time to start a REPL (for example): > As it turns out, Clojure start time is a complicated and multi-dimensional topic. Clojure projects are slow to start not only because of JVM — JVM itself starts in ~50 ms — but because of JVM specifics the classes are loaded slowly. Clojure projects are slow to start not only because of Clojure — Clojure itself starts in ~1 se…

    Comment linking /2019/12/21/clojure-start-time-in-2019

    on “Thoughts on Clojure UI framework”
  4. Submitted Clojure 2015 Year in Review as a story · 197 points

    HN discussion
  5. I like the suggestion in namespace aliasing in https://stuartsierra.com/2015/05/10/clojure-namespace-aliase... : As a general first rule, make the alias the same as the namespace name with the leading parts removed. (ns com.example.application (:require [clojure.java.io :as io] [clojure.string :as string])) Keep enough trailing parts to make each alias unique. Did you know that namespace aliases can have dots in the…

    Comment linking /2015/05/10/clojure-namespace-aliases

    on “Why Clojure?”
  6. Submitted How to Name Clojure Functions as a story · 120 points

    HN discussion
  7. ok, found it: https://stuartsierra.com/2008/08/08/clojure-for-the-semantic... I think it was in reference to the java ecosystem, more than "a better way to write java," although I still see it that way.

    Comment linking /2008/08/08/clojure-for-the-semantic-web

    on “Is Clojure dying, and what has Ruby got to do with it?”
  8. Submitted Clojure 2011 Year in Review as a story · 114 points

    HN discussion
  9. While everyone is entitled to their own opinion, I think it is worthwhile to give more detailed examples - like for example slow compared to what? For example there is a nice discussion over slow startup (note that for the most people the impression that it is slow comes from the Leiningen startup which starts two JVM processes): https://stuartsierra.com/2019/12/21/clojure-start-time-in-20...

    Comment linking /2019/12/21/clojure-start-time-in-2019

    on “Why Clojure? (2018)”
  10. Submitted Clojure Don’ts: Lazy Effects (2015) as a story · 108 points

    HN discussion
  11. In clojure, you can do this with as->, but there are reasons to be careful. Stuart Sierra has a great (brief) article about it[0]. The long and short of it is that it's really easy to change the "type" of an expression as it goes through your pipeline in unintuitive ways. This can cause surprises later down the line, so it's probably better to refactor the functions you are calling so that they play nicely with thre…

    Comment linking /2018/07/15/clojure-donts-thread-as

    on “Rackjure”
  12. Submitted Clojure 2013 Year in Review as a story · 108 points

    HN discussion
  13. Even in C, always remember the rules of Macro Club[1]: 1) You do not write macros. 2) You do not write macros that violate expectations of normal code behavior. 3) If this is your first time, you must write a macro. 4) Don't think object-oriented. 5) No shirt, No shoes, No dynamic scope. 6) Don't create new scoping rules. [1] http://stuartsierra.com/download/2010-10-23-clojure-conj-mac...

    Comment linking /download/2010-10-23-clojure-conj-macro-club.pdf

    on “Lisp macros for C”
  14. Submitted Clojure: It’s About the Libraries as a story · 68 points

    HN discussion
  15. Don't agree with 1&4, but 2&3 are subsets of a feature of the Clojure landscape: the guys behind Clojure aren't laser focused on driving adoption like, for instance, Scala is. Indeed, some of them don't really like the idea of a "Clojure Community". http://stuartsierra.com/2013/01/16/the-reluctant-dictator On the other hand, there's an amazing focus on doing the right thing rather than throwing features at a wall, w…

    Comment linking /2013/01/16/the-reluctant-dictator

    on “Why I am so excited about Clojure”
  16. Submitted Apathy of the Commons as a story · 64 points

    HN discussion
  17. Also relevant, Stuart Sierra's opinionated guide to threading macros: https://stuartsierra.com/2018/07/06/threading-with-style https://stuartsierra.com/2018/07/15/clojure-donts-thread-as

    Comment linking /2018/07/15/clojure-donts-thread-as

    on “Threading Macros Guide”
  18. Submitted Clojure 2012 Year in Review as a story · 62 points

    HN discussion
  19. > We all know Java is slow to start up… More specifically, Clojure — https://stuartsierra.com/2019/12/21/clojure-start-time-in-20...

    Comment linking /2019/12/21/clojure-start-time-in-2019

    on “(Yet Another) Lisp in Go”
  20. Submitted Design Philosophies of Developer Tools as a story · 49 points

    HN discussion
  21. I would nominate Stuart's dependency mgmt blog entry for this page too: http://stuartsierra.com/2011/06/01/dependency-management

    Comment linking /2011/06/01/dependency-management

    on “Clojure/core Reading List: Rationale, tutorials, resources”
  22. Submitted Objects Are Not Abstract Data Types as a story · 48 points

    HN discussion
  23. The problem is, and I think in the case of Github he makes his rationale plain and clear: > I don’t think it would be right for Emacs to use github.com. I don’t even think it is right for ENSIME to use github, but I’m scared of moving in-case we lose contributor momentum. The FSF gave github.com a bad score and it’s not libre, which makes me nervous. This is what scares me about the power of GH too. But let's be hon…

    Comment linking /2016/07/18/apathy-of-the-commons

    on “Open Letter to the Emacs Maintainers”
  24. Submitted Heating Up Clojure & Swing as a story · 38 points

    HN discussion
  25. I haven't done any GUI's in clojure, but i think swing is best doc'd, stuart Sierra series: http://stuartsierra.com/2010/01/03/doto-swing-with-clojure?0... http://stuartsierra.com/2010/01/02/first-steps-with-clojure-... -------------------- or SWT: http://berlinbrowndev.blogspot.com/2009/02/doing-it-wrong-fu... http://www.li-am.com/2009/08/button-in-eclipse-swt-clojure.h... http://www.li-am.com/2009/08/swt-is-alive-…

    Comment linking /2010/01/02/first-steps-with-clojure-swing

    on “Ask HN: Getting started with Clojure”
  26. Submitted Sequential Consequences as a story · 32 points

    HN discussion
  27. the code doesn't need anything, people reading it do. Names are useful because they make intent explicit. Point free programming in functional languages is often overused. Stuart wrote a good blog post about this a few years ago. "All too often, however, I see the threading macros used in places where they make the code less clear. Early in Clojure’s public existence, there was a fad for “point-free” programming, a…

    Comment linking /2018/07/06/threading-with-style

    on “Why Is Jepsen Written in Clojure?”
  28. Submitted Heating Up Clojure & Swing as a story · 27 points

    HN discussion
  29. Here's the big Thrift/PB comparison table: http://stuartsierra.com/2008/07/10/thrift-vs-protocol-buffer... Personally, I like Thrift better. More languages and greater community participation.

    Comment linking /2008/07/10/thrift-vs-protocol-buffers

    on “Suppose I wanted to write a C++ based web application...”
  30. Submitted Thoughts on Clojure Package Management as a story · 27 points

    HN discussion

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