| • Introduction of guest Karen Meyer, author of "Living Closure" and "Babar"
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| • Discussion of Karen's background and career path, from professional ballet dancer to software developer
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| • Mention of a pivotal moment in Karen's physics education that sparked her love for math and physics
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| • Conversation about the importance of math and physics in understanding real-world phenomena
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| • Personal anecdote about the host's own experience with physics and math
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| • Discussion of Karen's work on "Living Closure" and her role as a "closure developer"
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| • Discussion about the book/movie "The Martian" and its appeal to fans of math and science
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| • Clarification that the book is not a true story
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| • Mention of the movie "Prometheus" and the contrast in opinions on its quality
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| • Introduction of the guest and their background in software development
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| • Discussion of the guest's entry into software development through physics and mathematics
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| • Explanation of the guest's love for the programming language Closure
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| • Origin story of the guest's internet handle "Giga Squid" and its evolution from AOL chat room days
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| • Overview of the Closure programming language, its Lisp roots, and its features.
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| • The conversation starts with a discussion about the challenges of keeping up with the rapid pace of change in programming.
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| • The divide between object-oriented and functional programming languages is mentioned, with Lisp languages being discussed as being more academic and niche.
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| • The popularity of Closure is attributed to its practical side, including its ability to interop and run on the JVM.
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| • The importance of stability and backwards compatibility in Closure is emphasized, with the speaker praising the language's development team.
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| • A shout-out is given to Devon Walters, who contributed to the Changelog and wrote a popular post about Rich Hickey's "greatest hits".
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| • The history of Closure's creation is briefly discussed, with Rich Hickey working on the language solo before it was presented to a mailing list and developed further.
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| • The benefits of running on the JVM are highlighted, including its production-hardened and efficient nature, as well as its familiarity to many developers.
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| • The conversation touches on the idea that running on the JVM provides a comfortable and non-confrontational environment for developers.
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| • Discussion on introducing a "closure" to a team as a low-risk way to try it out
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| • Use cases for closure, including concurrency and mutable data structures
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| • Adoption of closure by big companies like banks, financial institutions, and retailers
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| • Benefits of a single language, such as closure script, for front-end and back-end development
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| • Potential drawbacks of using closure, such as embedded systems with small footprints
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| • Sponsorship break for imagex, a real-time image processing proxy and CDN
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| • Imagex features, including flexibility, quality, and performance, with a focus on affordability and speed
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| • The JVM size is decreasing due to advancements in Closure Script and JavaScript
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| • Closure was chosen for the receipt application due to its design and features
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| • Closure's concise syntax and ability to compose functions make it a good fit for the receipt application
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| • Readability of Closure code is an issue, but the unique syntax can be learned and is actually beneficial
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| • The REPL is a powerful feature of Closure that aids development and provides fast feedback
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| • Closure has a vibrant community, with a Slack channel and IRC community
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| • Closure's functional programming approach means data is passed through functions, but it's organized with namespaces and data structures.
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| • Channels for different people's interests and communities for various programming languages
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| • Closure script libraries and resources
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| • Closure conferences and meetup communities, including Closure Con, Closure West, and Strange Loop
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| • Chemical computing and its application to programming
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| • Chemical programming as a metaphor for solving problems in a non-sequential manner
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| • The potential of chemical programming to improve concurrency and problem-solving approaches
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| • The goal of exploring unconventional programming paradigms to break out of traditional thinking patterns
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| • Fertilization of ideas from computer science and biology/nature-inspired solutions
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| • Discussing the potential for innovative solutions in the field of fertilization
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| • Upcoming chemical computing talk and programming language development
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| • Inspiration from John McCarthy's paper "Elephant 2000" on future programming languages
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| • Exploring the idea of cross-fertilization between human language and programming languages
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| • Developing a programming language that incorporates speech acts and beliefs
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| • Using the language to control an AR drone and explore debugging in a new way
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| • Discussion of a programming language with a focus on syntax and closure
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| • Comparison of the language to natural language and humanizing the machine
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| • History and evolution of the language
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| • Discovery of another programming language with speech acts called Starlang
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| • Discussion of speech acts and their origins in philosophy
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| • Importance of reading academic papers and applying their concepts to development
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| • Cross-fertilization between academic and industry communities
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| • Overview of a book on closure, including its purpose and structure
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| • The speaker discusses their past struggles with running and how they eventually found success with a program that allowed them to gradually build up their endurance.
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| • The speaker applies the same concept to learning programming concepts, specifically closure, and finds that a structured training plan is more effective than trying to learn everything at once.
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| • The speaker created a book that provides a structured training plan for learning closure, which includes a series of katas and a final project to develop a web app.
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| • The speaker compares the approach of their book to the "cohen's" approach, which they interpret as being more focused on iterative, test-driven practice.
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| • The speaker's book is designed to be a more comprehensive and structured approach to learning closure, with a focus on practical application.
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| • The speaker describes a coding exercise called "Wonderland" that involves solving problems in the style of Lewis Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland"
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| • The exercises are independent projects with tests that need to be completed
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| • The speaker compares the Wonderland exercises to Code Katas, but notes that the terminology is not fixed
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| • The exercises are inspired by the puzzles and codes used by Lewis Carroll
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| • The speaker discusses the use of art and playfulness in the Wonderland exercises
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| • The conversation turns to the topic of inspiration and the speaker names Jim Wyrick, creator of the Rake library, as their programming hero
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| • The speaker mentions their admiration for Jim Wyrick's kindness and generosity with his knowledge
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| • The conversation ends with the speaker mentioning their interest in chemical programming and computing.
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| • Discussion of distributed computing, self-organizing systems, and self-healing systems
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| • Exploration of new libraries and languages, including Pixie Lang and its creator Timothy Baldridge
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| • Overview of Pixie Lang's features, including its closure-inspired design, fast compilation, and access to native libraries
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| • Mention of the package manager "dust" and the project's open contributions and friendly community
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| • Promotion of Karen's book "Living Closure" and its availability for order
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| • Closing remarks and promotion of the show, including the weekly email and nightly GitHub trending feed |
