PurelyFunctional.tv Newsletter 308: Conferences, Unison, NULL

Written by Eric Normand. Published: January 7, 2019.

Issue 308 - January 07, 2019 · Archives · Subscribe

Hi Clojurists,

There is something about the end of the year that nudges us to reflect on the prior year and look forward to the next year. While I make resolutions (and fail on many of them) all year round, January 1 seems like a good time to pay special attention to them.

As I look back on 2018, I'm a little disappointed. I want PurelyFunctional.tv to be a comprehensive Clojure training site. There's a lot more material that needs to be made and I only made two large courses last year (Domain-Specific Languages and Clojure Collections).

DSLs are not really core to the language. I probably shouldn't have made that course, in retrospect. There are more important topics to master on your Clojure journey. Clojure Collections, however, is a model of what I'd like future courses to be like: fundamental material at a comprehensive level. I want to make more courses like that in 2019.

If I didn't work on new content, what did I work on? Instead of new content, I worked a lot more on consolidation and discovery. The site got a redesign, which focuses on search and categorization to make everything findable. As far as things go, I think it's a win. It was difficult to find things on my site as I got more and more courses. I couldn't justify adding more hours of video without a new way to organize the material. Now, it's much better.

In 2018, I also ran a conference and had a baby. Both were great, but time-consuming. I definitely felt that they took from my ability to produce content. I'm pausing the conference (maybe in 2020) but you can't pause a baby.

I also started a podcast and pushed to increase my social media presence. That's all free stuff with long term payoff. It's authority and branding, and eventually it will be worth the effort.

In 2019, now that the content will actually be found, I want to get a solid base of fundamental Clojure topics. Things like Clojure syntax, the new command-line tool, ClojureScript compiler options, and REPL-driven development. Along the same lines, I want to re-record, expand, and update existing courses.

Finally, I want to thank everyone who is with me on this journey. I started back in 2012, and I've received so much support from so many people in the community. You rock.

Rock on!

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