Pre-conj Prep: Zach Oakes

October 12, 2014

Talk: Making Games at Runtime with Clojure

Zach Oakes' talk at the conj is about making games in a dynamic programming environment.

Background

Clojure, and Lisps in general, are famous for dynamic programming. That means being able to modify the program as it is running without restarting it. Wouldn't it be nice to develop games in this way? It seems like the perfect fit, since video games are so visual, you'd want to see what your code changes look like very quickly. This talk will explore this. Nightmod is a development environment written by Zach Oakes to modify a game in one window while it is running in another. It is based on the play-clj library, which he also wrote.

Why it matters

Game programming is a huge industry dominated by static languages with long code-compile-run cycles. Games cost millions of dollars to make, so even small improvements in developer productivity can save lots of money.

But further, games are hugely complex systems that are often on the cutting edge of programming. Functional programming has a lot to say about complex systems, yet there has not been a lot of functional programming in commercial games. The domain is ripe for exploration and discovery.

About Zach Oakes

Github

You can support Zach Oakes at Gratipay.

This post is one of a series called Pre-conj Prep, which originally was published by email. It's all about getting ready for the upcoming Clojure/conj, 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-conj Prep is about. I want to enhance everyone's experience at the conj by surfacing that context. With just a little homework, we can be better prepared to understand and enjoy the talks and the hallway conversations, as well as the beautiful venue and city of Washington, DC.

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