Dom Kiva-Meyer Clojure/West 2017 Interview

Written by Eric Normand. Published: March 29, 2017. Updated: April 24, 2018.

Dom Kiva-Meyer will be giving a talk at Clojure/West 2017. He will be speaking about ClojureScript in your Pocket.

Follow him on his Homepage, GitHub and Twitter.

PurelyFunctional.tv: How did you get into Clojure?

Dom Kiva-Meyer: Paul Graham has written extensively on the benefits of Lisp. In 2012, I wanted to learn a Lisp, and Clojure seemed like the most practical one. I began working through the various books and tutorials and came to love the language. ClojureScript added to my passion by bringing sanity to frontend web development and by unifying codebases under one language.

I was freelancing at the time, mostly doing Rails and JavaScript. Eventually, I landed some Clojure work. As the community has grown, I've had more opportunities to work with Clojure and ClojureScript. My partner and I at paren.com are now fortunate enough to work mostly with Clojure, ClojureScript, Datomic, and React. It's fun.

PF.tv: What is your talk about?

DKM: Our talk is about our most recent project, a mobile app built with ClojureScript, ReactNative, and GraphQL. We will talk about lessons that we learned using these technologies and provide the audience with take-aways about what they can expect from ReactNative and GraphQL.

PF.tv: Who is your talk for?

DKM: Our primary target is web developers who are familiar with ClojureScript and React and are interested in using ReactNative for mobile development. The talk should also be useful for anyone considering unifying their web and mobile stacks under React as well as anyone interested in GraphQL. Companies that are weighing the costs and benefits of mobile and are reluctant due to higher development and maintenance costs are also our target.

PF.tv: What do you hope people will take away from the talk?

DKM: We hope people who are interested in ReactNative and/or GraphQL will come away with a clearer picture of what to expect. We also hope to pique the interest of everyone else, especially people already using React, and encourage them to pursue mobile development with ReactNative. Last, we hope our audience is encouraged to consider using GraphQL.

PF.tv: What concepts do you recommend people be familiar with to maximize their experience with the talk?

DKM: Our talk assumes familiarity with ClojureScript and React, but not ReactNative or GraphQL. We recommend people become familiar with React, if they are not yet. You don't need to know what GraphQL is, but we assume some knowledge of RESTful API development, architecture, and documentation techniques. Basic knowledge of JavaScript, the JavaScript ecosystem, and frontend development will provide better context as well.

PF.tv: What resources are available for people who want to study up before the talk?

DKM:

Understand basic React usage - https://facebook.github.io/react/
Play with Expo for ReactNative - https://sketch.expo.io/
Learn about ReactNative - https://facebook.github.io/react-native/
Learn about ReactNative with ClojureScript - http://cljsrn.org/
Learn about GraphQL - http://graphql.org/

Join #cljsrn and #graphql on http://clojurians.net/

PF.tv: Where can people follow you online?

DKM: Our website and blog is https://www.paren.com/.

Me around the interwebs:

@domkm on http://clojurians.net/ * https://twitter.com/DomKM * https://github.com/DomKM * https://www.linkedin.com/in/DomKM

My partner: @lilymgoh on http://clojurians.net/ * https://twitter.com/LilyMGoh/ * https://github.com/LilyMGoh/ * https://www.linkedin.com/in/LilyMGoh/

PF.tv: Are there any projects you'd like people to be aware of? How can people help out?

DKM: We've love to see the GraphQL ecosystem for Clojure improve. For the GraphQL server, Lacinia (https://github.com/walmartlabs/lacinia), was recently released. It looks much better than what we had to do, but doesn't yet support parallel query execution, async resolvers, or subscriptions. For the GraphQL client, we will also be looking into creating or collaborating on a ClojureScript wrapper for Relay 2, when it is released.

PF.tv: Where do you see the state of Clojure in 10 years?

DKM: Clojure is less than 10 years old, so accurately predicting the state of Clojure in 2027 seems impossible. With that said, we certainly hope that Clojure, as an ecosystem and community, will grow and become more diverse. Speculating (and hoping), a new dialect of Clojure that targets WebAssembly will emerge and become the dominant dialect, surpassing Clojure and ClojureScript.

PF.tv: If Clojure were an animal, what animal would it be?

DKM: Hmm, a benevolent dictator governed Clojure and brought Lisp back from the brink of extinction, so I'm going to say Clojure would be the panda.