Learning

At this year’s EuroClojure I gave a talk about probabilistic programming with Clojure, using the Anglican probabilistic programming system. Abstract: Probabilistic Programming Systems aim to merge general purpose programming with probabilistic modelling. They provide powerful statistical inference and thus allow developers to focus on the modelling with tools and environments they are comfortable with. These emerging methods are promising additions to the Data Scientist’s toolbox and an interesting, satisfying playground for programming enthusiasts. This talk is an introduction to Probabilistic Programming Systems, their use and value for the industry and Clojure’s great library “Anglican”. ...

The :clojureD conference is approaching quickly: February 25, 2017 in Berlin, yes that is only about two weeks away! I am really looking forward to it and hope to meet you there. We have a quite interesting mix of talks I would say. Among my favourites are “Powerful Data Access in Clojure” by Yannick Scherer, “Writing Clojure at Runtime with Nightlight” by Zach Oakes, “On automatic generation of user interfaces” by Philipp Meier and ...

Recently I got some interest in generative “art”. Without going into what qualifies as art and what not, here are some of the things I created: Generative Art with Processing Generative Art with Processing Generative Art with Processing Generative Art with Processing Generative Art with Processing Generative Art with Processing Generative Art with Processing Generative Art with Processing The code generating these images is available on github over here. Try them live, as a couple of these images are from actual animations. ...

Motivation A short discussion on the #clojure-berlin channel ( Clojurians on Slack) got me interested in the letfn special form of clojure.core. The question was raised if the docstring of letfn describes it well. Wether it is, or not, I got interested in how it works and more specifically why it’s syntax is different from let for example. Here is the documentation for letfn: (doc letfn) ------------------------- clojure.core/letfn (letfn [fnspecs*] exprs*) Special Form fnspec ==> (fname [params*] exprs) or (fname ([params*] exprs)+) Takes a vector of function specs and a body, and generates a set of bindings of functions to their names. All of the names are available in all of the definitions of the functions, as well as the body. As you can see it takes a vector of function specs and every function spec has the form (fname [params\*] exprs). I was quite surprised to see such a syntax for the specs: Each spec is a list, but it’s not quoted. So outside of the letfn special form the spec would be evaluated. ...

Recently I had the chance to be a coach at ClojureBridge Berlin. You might not have heard about this event before, but maybe you know RailsBridge. ClojureBridge’s mission is: ClojureBridge aims to increase diversity within the Clojure community by offering free, beginner-friendly Clojure programming workshops for women. Of course I did not hesitate to volunteer for that. I have to admit though, that I also had a hidden agenda: I wanted to test the hypothesis, that a LISP (Clojure in this case) is well suited to get started with programming. When talking to experienced developers about Clojure, I often have to face a negative reaction towards LISPs, sometimes also about (mostly) pure Functional Programming (less these days, as FP is so hip again). When I told some colleagues, including some with a formal computer science education as well as way more experienced devs that me, that I am going to help programming beginners to get started by using Clojure, they most often asked back if this is some kind of sadistic prank. ...

A while ago I did a small introduction to building a simple REST API with Clojure from scratch at Futurice in Berlin. While preparing that, I did create a small tutorial and demo project to follow along ( GitHub, Tutorial). The presentation was recorded on video and you can check it out right now, right here: [embed]https://vimeo.com/125578412[/embed] Feedback, as well as pull requests are highly appreciated. The tutorial is not complete yet and has some glitches here and there I guess. However, I already got feedback, that I was a good starting point for multiple people without previous Clojure experience. Thanks Nils ...

I like listening to podcast while running. During marathon preparation I run around 50-60km per week, so there is plenty of time to learn exciting stuff about latest technologies. Here are my favorite podcasts for software developers: Software Engineering Radio http://www.se-radio.net/ Software Engineering Radio is an awesome Podcast if you are a professional software developer and want to hear about tech in-depth. This is probably my favorite Podcast of them all: Excellent choice of topics, great guests and high quality production. ...