Day two of MiniKanren starts by covering matching with matche which is a macro that allows you to do common matching operations with less boilerplate.But of course once you start down that route you are going to want to be able to lose the boilerplate from your whole function definition. That̵ …

My last brush with logic programming was when I was working through the original Seven Languages in Seven Weeks back in 2011 and learning a little bit of Prolog. That was an eye opening experience — letting the computer do the work just didn’t feel like any coding I had done before.The …

When I was first learning Java there was a big trend towards using design patterns. The extreme edge of that trend was critiqued wonderfully by Mark Jason Dominus in Why Design Patterns Aren …

I’ve finally finished myseven languages in seven weeks adventure. Ittook, as I’d oringinally expected, significantly morethan seven weeks, though the actual amount of time which I dedicatedwas only a couple of days more that the amount allocated in the book. It wasjust that the wee …

I suppose it was inevitable after my cockiness on day two that day three should be a challenging one. I felt very stretched; mostly I was getting stuck on syntax, though. The actual coding was great fun. I’ve come rather to like Clojure; I definitely think it’ll be one of the languages I …

Today’s excercises seemed a little more straightforward than in previous languages. I may be simply getting brainier, of course. I doubt that. It is something of a lightning tour that we take through Clojure; a lot of stuff gets covered in a little time. The chapter covers recursion, incl …

There's been a brief hiatus in my Clojure week. Mostly due to me being knackered after some hardcore work days. In the last instalment I got my basic VimClojure environment set up. After that particular mission Day One’s excercises seemed almost trivial. I expect things to become more diffi …

I spent quite a while trying to save time on getting a nice Clojure development setup working on my Debian Squeeze box. As it turned out I should have spent some extra moments doing the right thing rather than hoping a quick hack would work. Here's my notes on how to get VimClojure working on Squee …

There is an idea, popularized in the Pragmatic Programmer book that its good to learn a new programming language every year. Seven Languages In Seven Weeks takes the concept one stage further, although clearly only for certain values of learning. One is never going to be proficient at any lan …