Pre-West Interview: Morgan Mullaney

April 15, 2015

This interview was graciously conducted by Nola Stowe. She's a programmer, the co-founder of DevChix, and a prolific teacher. She recently ran ClojureBridge Austin. Please shout out to her and say thanks!

Introduction

Morgan Mullaney is the next interview participant. She is giving a talk at Clojure/West about why clojure is good for programming games. The background to her talk is available, if you like.

Interview with Morgan Mullaney

Nola: How long ago did you learn Clojure?

Morgan: Learning a language is more a drawn-out process with lots of stops and starts than a discrete event, but I first wrote a 'hello world' in Clojure in 2011 and I've been using it "professionally" for about 2 years

Nola: What recommendations do you have for someone learning clojure?

Morgan:

Read Kyle's Clojure from the Ground Up, which is unique in that it captures the elegance and beauty of functional programming while being totally approachable to people who haven't programmed before, or who have only used imperative/OO languages.
Explore with small, discrete, hackable projects. Twitter bots are a great choice because it's quick to get one working, and there are so many neat things you can do with them. Don't believe me? Look at how neat this is.

Nola: Have you made games in other languages besides Clojure? If so, which languages?

Morgan: I've poked around with game making in Python, Common Lisp, and Twine, but nothing terribly serious in any of those.

Nola: What is your favorite computer game(s) to play?

Morgan: Gosh what a broad question. It's impossible to pick favorites, but I keep picking up FTL and Starbound over and over. One that really stands out in recent memory is Porpentine's "With Those We Love Alive" which is just moving. If you haven't already, definitely go check it out.

Nola: If Clojure was a food, what would it be?

Morgan: Hummus, with some coffee beans mixed into it. Nothing against coffee, but what is it doing in here?

Nola: Thanks for the interview. It was very informative.

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.