Conor White-Sullivan 𐃏 @Conaw 2019-12-17
90. The Elements of Clojure is a incredible resource even for non-Clojure devs
Most important idea — How to NAME THINGS
Naming things well is one of the hardest parts of programming, huge gains for code legibility if you do well
Great to have a guide
Conor White-Sullivan 𐃏 @Conaw 2019-12-17
91. If you are poor — or you are living off of your nest egg to do research and worried about your burn rate — it is 100% OK for you to pirate textbooks, O’Reilly Books, and scholarly articles.
Textbooks: http://gen.lib.rus.ec
Journals Articles: https://sci-hub.se
Conor White-Sullivan 𐃏 @Conaw 2019-12-17
92. If you are rich - pay the publishers, fund the kickstarters, chip in for the Patreons.
If you run a Startup with funding or are profitably bootstrapped - everyone on your team should have an unlimited expense account for books and online courses.
Conor White-Sullivan 𐃏 @Conaw 2019-12-17
93. Open source is about increasing the information commons — putting out free things that give other people power and agency.
There are many ways to contribute
Write tutorials, record screencasts, expand the docs, open source your example projects.
http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#respect3…
Conor White-Sullivan 𐃏 @Conaw 2019-12-17
94. If you really want to level up in a language - find a great example project and deeply study the code.
I spent hours and hours going through the @ZetawarGame code base with pen and paper to reverse engineer every decision
Conor White-Sullivan 𐃏 @Conaw 2019-12-17
95. Everyone interested in programming languages (or writing software to do powerful things) should read Paul Graham
Especially his earliest essays like
http://paulgraham.com/progbot.html
http://paulgraham.com/popular.html
and most especially **Beating the Averages**
http://paulgraham.com/avg.html
Conor White-Sullivan 𐃏 @Conaw 2019-12-17
96. When you read those, and the quote below has sunk in, and you start to have dreams like the xkcd author
Then consider this
2019-09-23
If you are interested in Lisp because of PG’s essays its important to know that he now recommends Clojure. x.com/paulg/status/7…
Conor White-Sullivan 𐃏 @Conaw 2019-12-17
97. The WAT talk is hilarious, but when you learn a new language - don’t spend ALL your time looking at it’s flaws
I trolled OO hard in this thread, there are still beautiful ideas there
Explore new lands for treasures you can bring back home.
https://destroyallsoftware.com/talks/wat
Conor White-Sullivan 𐃏 @Conaw 2019-12-17
98. Programming languages have a culture.
Go to the conferences and meetups, join the list servs, hang out on the slack channels.
If the language community isn’t filled with the kind of people you want to be around — enjoy the books, but take the ideas with you somewhere else.
Conor White-Sullivan 𐃏 @Conaw 2019-12-17
99. It’s much easier to do (98) if your language has Macros though!!
And the Clojure community is exceptionally friendly to beginners and folks who don’t fit the stereotypical profile.
Incredibly curious, incredibly pragmatic.
So really, my opinion is you should learn Clojure.
Conor White-Sullivan 𐃏 @Conaw 2019-12-17
100. Form your own opinions on programming languages, and share them freely.
When someone contradicts them, it is a great signal to get curious - not defensive. You may learn something
But use the block feature widely for anyone who turns disagreement into a personal attack.
Conor White-Sullivan 𐃏 @Conaw 2019-12-17
👑 These are just my opinions. They may not be true, but I hope they have been interesting.
It is more important that they be interesting than true anyway.
https://x.com/Conaw/status/1077395379253960704…
Conor White-Sullivan 𐃏 @Conaw 2020-05-26
101. Decided I’m going to keep extending this thread
Mostly because this point from @elzr brings together my two largest points
Lisp and Excel are both powerful because they expand the domain of thinkable thoughts
Goal of @RoamResearch is to combine em
2020-05-15
As Dijkstra never said:
For all their flaws, SPREADSHEETS transmit the full flavor of liberation: they have assisted over a BILLION fellow humans in thinking previously impossible thoughts. 🔥
