Artem Barmin

How to Increase Clojure Outreach: Product Management Approach and Focused Ecosystem

By Artem Barmin

HI! I'm the co-founder of software development company Freshcode and Clojure enthusiast. 6 months ago our team started doing research to understand what is missing in the Clojure ecosystem. We've interviewed dozens of Clojure developers of different levels and asked them about common problems they have ever encountered while using Clojure. The major concern we've seen is that it is very hard for them to decide which library or toolset to choose for certain tasks. So, the tooling problem is not about producing new tools, it is more about curating a set of tools or making a good set for people. This is a huge challenge, especially for beginners. It slows down the process of learning and actively using the language. That is why my talk focuses on the core problems of the Clojure toolkit (mostly caused by the Lisp curse) and possible solutions. In this context, I'll also plan to present a “Clojure tooling platform”, developed by our team on a cost-free basis, as one of the solutions for this field. The mission of our platform is to become a “Google” for Clojure libraries and unite Clojure community members around ecosystem management. The main idea - focus on Observability (inspired by https://bit.dev with some extra dimensions), and automatization of making decisions of using libraries at the project level. Introduce an “observability standard” for the Clojure ecosystem. However, it was important to note that I have no intention of just promoting the platform. First of all, it will be talking about the Clojure tooling field overview, and I hope, you will find it worthwhile for re:Clojure.