Interview with Rich Hickey, creator of Clojure

One really provocative and insightful comment that is independent of clojure itself:<p>"<i>I think programmers have become inured to incidental complexity... when they encounter complexity, they consider it a challenge to overcome, rather than an obstacle to remove.<p>Overcoming complexity isn't work, it's waste.</i>"<p>This is a useful maxim for me. I have definitely been attracted to complexity that was really incidental in programming.

<i>RH: Productivity comes from being able to focus. Interactive development environments (REPLs etc) help you focus, by letting you try things immediately.</i><p>This couldn't be more true and becomes clearly apparent when moving from languages that require compile-deploy-run cycles.

Clojure is fast becoming one of my top favourite languages.<p>Lisp and the ability to use Java to "get things done" is not to be underestimated I think. Not to mention it's hugely useful as a java repl. Just being able to play with java classes from the repl helps me in my day to day java development.

Met the guy at the Clojure user group here in NYC, apparently there are a couple of financial firms in the city already using it. Stuff is pretty cool. Rich looked like a total hacker dude ;o) Actually all the clojure developers were all bearded long haired hacker dudes. Definitely my kind of place