Spec-ulation
Rich Hickey·2016·Clojure Conj·1 hr 12 minHickey 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.
Maybe Not
Rich Hickey·2018·Clojure ConjHickey 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.
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.
The Language of the System
Rich Hickey·2017·Clojure ConjHickey on the fact that the language inside your process is rarely the language between your processes — and what that should imply for system design.