Eric Normand
PodcastClojureCoursesBook

Steve Miner Clojure/conj 2016 Interview

Written by Eric Normand. Published: November 14, 2016. Updated: August 20, 2018.

Steve Miner will be giving a talk at Clojure/conj 2016. He is an independent developer.

Follow him on Twitter and GitHub.

PurelyFunctional.tv: How did you get into programming?

Steve Miner: I learned Lisp in college, circa 1981. I don't remember being taught the paradigm of Functional Programming in a formal sense. After many years of Java and Objective-C, Clojure gave me a chance to adopt functional programming practices in a more rigorous way.

PF.tv: What is your talk about?

SM: My talk is about how the art of juggling relates to programming.

PF.tv: Why juggling?

SM: I think programmers can draw inspiration from many arts, including juggling. Of course, the real reason is that juggling is fun.

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

SM: I hope people gain some insight into the mathematical theory of juggling and how that theory might inform the practice of software development.

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

SM: I don't assume the audience will have any juggling experience, but you might enjoy the talk more if you've tried to do a little juggling. If you want to be an expert, learn the "siteswap" notation. On the Clojure side, I plan to use Quil and Loom for visualizing juggling patterns.

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

SM: Wikipedia covers many juggling topics. Youtube has lots of videos. See also juggle.org and thewjf.com. The Quil and Loom libraries are on GitHub.

PF.tv: Where can people follow you online?

SM: [@miner]Twitter on Twitter, miner on GitHub.

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

SM: I'll post so me code after the talk, but most of my open source projects are just for my own amusement.

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

SM: I expect that functional programming will still be considered a "secret weapon" but that's OK because it will be used behind the scenes everywhere.

PF.tv: If functional programming were a superhero, what superpower would it have?

SM: shapeshifting

PF.tv: Thank you for the interview!