ericn

Wow! Awesome story! It totally resonates with my experience with Clojure.

Would you like to do an interview about it for my site PurelyFunctional.tv? I think your story could help others find their careers. Email me at eric@purelyfunctional.tv and we'll figure out the best way to do it. Thanks!

Buy Happy is using Clojure + ClojureScript in production.

http://buyhappy.co/

Clojure web server backend (running on Heroku). ClojureScript/Om frontend, which connects to server with Sente.

We also have a browser extension (Chrome/Safari/Firefox) written in ClojureScript.

#4 is correct.

In terms of reducing errors, Haskell goes a long way, but it does not eliminate all errors.

That's close to what I meant.

Closer would be:

Clojure def is imperative because the semantics are defined mechanically, leaving fewer implementation details up to the implementer. http://clojure.org/special_forms#Special Forms--(def symbol init?)

Haskell toplevel function definitions are more declarative because the semantics are defined less concretely. https://www.haskell.org/ghc/docs/latest/html/users_guide/inf...

This is what I meant. I did not mean to start a flame war about the definition of declarative. It's more about different approaches to language design.

Location: New Orleans, LA

Remote: Yes.

Willing to relocate: Negative.

Technologies: Clojure, ClojureScript, Haskell, CSS, HTML, React, Om, PostgreSQL

Email: ericwnormand@gmail.com

Website: http://lispcast.com/

Github: https://github.com/ericnormand

Specialities in analyzing a problem from the business perspective and delivering a solution to those needs. Functional programming, simple, clean code. Can help train new hires in good functional skills. Love building interactive systems.

I've worked for startups for the last 4 years. I know what execution means. I wear many hats, from ops to dev to design to customer service. If you want someone you can have a conversation with about your business and have a working solution delivered, hire me. I'm looking for a place where I can thrive.

Looking for full-time/part-time contract work; must be remote or in New Orleans. Email me and we'll get started.

You get a a dialog if we find a match (whether it's higher or lower). If we don't find a match, we don't show anything.

Updated the comment to be more clear.

I have a hard time believing this. I can see the chrome store in Firefox.

Thanks for the report!

As far as we know, that error is harmless. It has never affected us negatively before.

Can you give more details about which extensions stopped working?

Thanks

Just for reference,

At the moment, the best price we've found on this product is on Best Buy. If you add it to your cart and view your cart, you should see a best price confirmation.

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/radar-laser-detector/1470022.p?i...

You only see a confirmation if we could find a match. Otherwise, we stay out of your way.

This Blu-ray player is cheaper elsewhere:

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Sony+-+Smart+Blu-ray+Player/7829...

Add it to your cart and go to your cart and you'll see a better offer.

Good luck reading the code! It's compiled by Google Closure compiler, so it's highly minified. The bulk of the extension is actually written in ClojureScript.

By the way, extensions for Firefox and other browsers are coming soon.

We would like to partner with retailers directly to get offers they cannot advertise on their website.

Yep. We started with scraping, though we prefer affiliate data feeds. We still use scraped data while we wait for the affiliate approval.

Good point. We're trying out the cart because we don't see many competitors there yet. Plus we have some more ideas for using the cart in the future. Stay tuned!

OP here. We definitely use affiliate links when we can.

Why not make the upward facing arrow be text like "good quality" or "useful" or "thoughtful"?

> Most languages have most of the listed features.

Most of the features are not hard to find, but you have to switch languages a lot if you want to use them all.

Good one.

I should add controlled laziness to the list.

Clojure is close. From what I know of it, Go is close, too.

Good idea. But they do kind of fall under a "model of time."

I meant data-driven programming.

http://www.faqs.org/docs/artu/ch09s01.html

More data (and data structures) and less code. It's very common in Lisps and other homo-iconic languages.

In your example, that is O(1). A computer can add two numbers in constant time. How could that be two steps? It is obviously only one operation.

In general, you can count steps as whatever you like. For instance, you could say it takes O(n) CPU operations or O(n^2) file seeks. But then people use the word "time" as a proxy for those. You'll hear "constant time" or "order-n time".

Two things about patents:

If patent workers are overworked, why don't we replace them with a certificate of origination. You file it, it takes two weeks, it's dated, and it describes the work. Then, if you need to sue someone, you then have to pay to prove that they are infringing. Reverse the burden of proof and delay the cost of approving patents.

Second, my biggest problem with software patents is that you can't build the thing from the description. If you look at a patent for a device, there are schematics and descriptions of how it works. Software patents just say "the user can click a button and it automatically buys a book". Where are the detailed drawings of how the web server connects to the payment system which connects to the distribution center? How do you scale that up to millions of users? That's where the magic is.

Patents are supposed to give the inventor a reasonable period of time to profit from his work. After that time period is over, it becomes public knowledge, so everyone can do it for free. Software patents do not give away the knowledge that it actually takes to build the system. Instead, they typically just describe the tiny bit that is apparent to the user.

I love GMail's threaded view.

My intention was more "why haven't desktop apps copied the best parts of GMail and made it irrelevant?" But here are the features I'd like to see in a desktop client:

Conversation view (one line per conversation in folder view, all emails in conversation shown when viewing the conversation, and the emails are sorted by most recent message, etc) Fast (fast search, fast email viewing, no pauses while waiting for emails to download, etc) Simple interface (single screen which changes views)

The thing I'd like most that gmail doesn't have (even with offline gmail) is to have my mail stored locally and be able to use it while I'm not connected.

I would add "conversation view" to the list. It's much better than threaded view, even though it's only slightly different.

I have lost emails in other clients due to the fact that I was viewing them in threaded view and the conversation was really old. They just didn't show up in the first couple of pages of emails and I missed them.

But the question wasn't meant to be about which features make GMail better. It was supposed to ask why a desktop app hasn't copied the features.

Yes, it is amazing how it changed the way I viewed email. But why hasn't a copycat mail client come about, with all of the advantages of running native, come about to surpass it?

All I know is Merlin Mann became famous by selling productivity porn. Now he repents and he's a prophet?

There is another problem with software patents that is usually not talked about: they don't present how to build it. Most patents (outside of software patents) present enough information for a competent person to build the device (or whatever) themselves. The idea is that your idea is protected for the duration of the patent, then when it's over everyone else gets it for free. Software patents usually don't do this. I cannot implement, for example, Amazon's "Tabbed browsing" from the description in the patent. I still have to do the hard work myself.