Maybe Not
Rich Hickey·2018·Clojure Conj·58 minHickey takes aim at Maybe/Optional and the conflation of optionality with absence — arguing that wrapping types is the wrong place to encode 'I might not give this to you.'
Effective Programs — 10 Years of Clojure
Rich Hickey·2017·Clojure ConjRich Hickey on what a decade of Clojure has taught him about the kinds of problems most production code is actually trying to solve — and why static type systems aren't the answer he keeps hearing about.
Spec-ulation
Rich Hickey·2016·Clojure ConjHickey on versioning, breaking changes, and the quiet violence we do to downstream users when we 'fix' our APIs in place.
Design in Practice
Rich Hickey·2023·Clojure ConjAfter years of talking about design in the abstract, Hickey demystifies the actual practice — the concrete moves and habits that turn 'design' from a noun into a verb.
Transducers
Rich Hickey·2014·Strange LoopHickey extracts the essence of map and filter from the collections they were trapped in — and shows what falls out when transformations become first-class, context-free things.
Simple Made Easy
Rich Hickey·2011·Strange LoopRich Hickey emphasizes simplicity's virtues, and argues that we conflate easy with simple — at a real cost.
Are We There Yet?
Rich Hickey·2009·JVM Languages SummitHickey's foundational case against pervasive state and mutability, and a glimpse at the ideas that would later become Clojure's identity model.