Ep 111: Loopify!

Functional Design in Clojure

Each week, we discuss a different topic about Clojure and functional programming.

If you have a question or topic you'd like us to discuss, tweet @clojuredesign, send an email to [email protected], or join the #clojuredesign-podcast channel on the Clojurians Slack.

This week, the topic is: "trying again". We throw our code in a loop, and it throws us for a loop.

Our discussion includes:

• Sportify continues!
• When is it time to stop developing?
• How do we handle retries?
• What if you need to recur from catch?
• How do we recover mid-process?
• Where should the recovery logic go?
• Is there a way to get all the critical context at the same level?
• What should you preserve across a recur?
• What does it mean to be "loop native"?
• What is the basic structure for any automation?
• What is a "single application state"?

Selected quotes

• It's a lot like having a project on a workbench. You have all of the tools and all the information laid out before you on that workbench. Nothing is tucked in a drawer or inside a cabinet.

• That's a very important lesson for any developer: you can always stop—at least after it's working.

• Nothing in the world is solved except by adding another level of abstraction.

• I was not expecting that level of mutation! I was expecting a Kafka log written in stone!

• The positive is it has everything. The negative is it has everything.

• We would like more loop-native code inside of our cloud-native application.

• Are you suggesting that just because we can, it doesn't mean we should? We're programmers! If the language lets us do it, it must be a good idea!

• One of the reasons why I like Clojure is because it specifically tells me that I can't do some things that are bad to do.

• All of the context is in one map. It has everything in it. One map to rule them all!

• Might this be the fabled "single application state"?

• We have the thinking function, the doing function, and the assimilate function.

Links

• Sportify! series:
  • Ep 101: Sportify!
  • Ep 102: REPLify!
  • Ep 103: Explorify!
  • Ep 104: Assembleify!
  • Ep 105: Codify!
  • Ep 106: Robustify!
  • Ep 107: Idempotify!
  • Ep 108: Testify!
  • Ep 109: Extractify!
  • Ep 110: Contextify!