Pre-West Prep: Robert Krahn

April 05, 2015

Talk: Programming Clojure, Smalltalk-style

Robert Krahn's talk at Clojure/West is about cloxp, an implementation of some important ideas from Smalltalk in Clojure.

Background

Back in the sixties, some computer researchers were trying to make a system that you could have a conversation with. The user, of course, would be intelligent enough to hold up their end. But the researchers did not know how to make the computer hold up its end. The researchers compromised and decided to expose the entire contents of the system's memory and represent it visually on the screen. Every object would have at least a primitive visual form, while others would be richly interactive elements. That way, the user could at least interpret it for themselves. The end result was the ancestor of the GUIs we use today.

But the GUIs we use don't have that property of exposing the contents of memory to inspection. The objects on the screen are not direct representations of the objects in memory They are separate constructs. Cloxp aims to bring the inspectability and directness from Smalltalk to Clojure. Check out the intro page, which has a nice long explanation and a demo video, with links to more background.

About Robert Krahn

Homepage - GitHub - Twitter

This post is one of a series called Pre-West Prep, which is also published by email. It's all about getting ready for the upcoming Clojure/West, organized by Cognitect. Conferences are ongoing conversations and explorations. Speakers discuss trends, best practices, and the future by drawing on the rich context built up in past conferences and other media.

That rich context is what Pre-West Prep is about. I want to enhance everyone's experience at the conference by surfacing that context. With just a little homework, we can be better prepared to understand and enjoy the talks and the hallway conversations.

Clojure/West is a conference organized and hosted by Cognitect. This information is in no way official. It is not sponsored by nor affiliated with Clojure/West or Cognitect. It is simply me (and helpers) curating and organizing public information about the conference.

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