Tim Ewald - Clojure: Programming with Hand Tools

Interesting presentation that explores your question. +1 intersection from this commenter. Tim Ewald - Clojure: Programming with Hand Tools ▶ this video

in “Cheap Router Table and Lift” · View on HN

I'm not a Closure coder but I loved this talk on how as your tooling becomes more complex and automated, you start to lose sight of simpler solutions to problems. It's all about woodworking! Tim Ewald - Clojure: Programming with Hand Tools ▶ this video

in “Ask HN: What are some of the best technical talks you've heard?” · View on HN

I also think it seems pretty appealing. There have been some interesting things on HN over the years about it. I loved this talk about how the tools you use determine how you look at problems (Tim Ewald - Clojure: Programming with Hand Tools) ▶ this video And if you haven't seen him before, you're about to fall in love with Matthias Wandel: [link] [link]

in “Ask HN: If you were to switch career, what would you do?” · View on HN

Can't help but mention this great video where an enthusiast woodworking engineer makes a parallel between tools in the real world and tools in computing: ▶ this video

in “Beginning Woodworking” · View on HN

There was a talk at Clojure/conj by Tim Ewald on just that: ▶ this video "Programming with hand tools" Lots of conference reviews nominated it in their favourite talks too.

in “Best development book I've read, has no code in it” · View on HN

We build complicated software with simple tools where I work using Clojure. There's even a talk about Java:Powertools::Clojure:Handtools! [1] [1] - ▶ this video

in “Why I hate frameworks (2005)” · View on HN

The "wat" is a good first step in identifying problems. However, I see is people getting stuck on "wat" and not moving forward. People would rather win an argument than advance knowledge & the practice. Lot's of ego, programmers have. In the mean time, one can learn to appreciate & use javascript strengths. It can be quite fun, liberating, & useful. Anecdotally, I have not run into these crazy issues, and I program in javascript everyday. I also have a large app and the framework I built is custom. I liken this to using C++, Unix, & bash as a base. Yes, you could say these tools suck and spend time creating, marketing, & community-building for a new tool. Or you can iterate & improve upon these existing tools. There's no wrong answer. What do you want to accomplish? > Sushi knives don't decide to cut you because the rice came from a different origin. That analogy seems like a stretch. Care to explain? Javascript works with different locales. There are many international websites that use javascript. Also, javascript does not "decide" to create a bug in your program. You create that bug by misusing the tool. You will get further if you take some responsibility and improve your practice. > And I'd guess that most craftsmen, outside of a ritual and tradition would love for their tools to have less disadvantages. I agree with that. Usually the improvements are iterative. One could use a laser cutter (which does not need sharpening) to cut sushi, but that would also burn it. Here'

in “The Birth and Death of JavaScript [video]” · View on HN

It's funny, even as someone who knows js really well, having worked with it for a decade (actually, longer!), the explosion in the ecosystem took me by surprise. I left my web agency role over a year ago to work on my start up with a friend so I've been in relative developmental isolation (lots of python and js, not so much keeping up with the latest trends). I came back to help out on a project recently and had to spend a day researching all the new tools. Particularly around package management, bower, grunt, yeoman, node, npm etc. A year ago a js lib was generally delivered as a js or min.js file. Now there's the whole system to sit around it; every project on github now seems to include the config for each of the different package managers. Even a vagrant file so you can get it all up and running on a brand new vm. Something as simple as adding bootstrap to a project. It's not totally obvious when you first look at it. Where does the code go? How do you compile it in such a way that you don't touch the vendor src itself but you can customise it etc. I have a method that works for me, but I had to play around a little to figure out how to fit it to my needs. Once I got through that stage I was really happy with where things were at. JS libs are nice and easy to install and version control now, dependency management with bower has worked really well for me so far. Grunt makes the automation side of development nice, contained and easily shared. All in all it's a really good

in “JavaScript: The Right Way” · View on HN

Learn Clojure. Then you can spend the rest of your life building with hand tools, lol: ▶ this video (Seriously, though, Clojure is awesome—but occasionally I miss the guardrails of a framework.)

in “Why I Hate Frameworks (2005)” · View on HN