Clojurians Log v2

I’m new to Clojure and just discovered https://practicalli.github.io/clojure/alternative-tools/clojure-tools/cognitect-rebl.html I’m looking for blog posts etc. showing how to use it to create diagrams, bar charts, that sort of thing.

I’d also be happy to use any REPL driven way to create charts - doesn’t have to use REBL

i think reveal has some charting capacity <https://vlaaad.github.io/reveal/#charts>

This looks like a great fit!

Any good plotting/charting/graphing libraries in case I grow out of what Reveal offers?

REBL does charting (uses JavaFX)

in Java land, JFreeChart is the classic one to use (you have to pay for the dev guide which some people find annoying), but XChart has gained some traction too

For anyone doing HTML, this article is pretty nice: https://markodenic.com/html-tips/

Not sure where this fits, but Microsoft now has a build of OpenJDK with long term support. https://devblogs.microsoft.com/java/announcing-preview-of-microsoft-build-of-openjdk/

Please have a look at Vega and Oz!

https://github.com/metasoarous/oz

Looks beautiful! Thanks!

For example see https://graphql.gklijs.tech/results/graphql-servers-feb/average-latency using Oz and Vega. Pretty easy API, and lots of options.

A. LTS B. Responsibility, see the "mystery meat jdk build" with Debian

What do you mean by LTS? Doesn’t AdoptOpenJdk provides the same?

Some providers could theoretically guarantee support past the end of official LTS

Backporting patches themselves, etc

Ok understood. While I see the argument, I still find it kinda of a PR rather than something really useful

It is not PR. Microsoft is using Java more and more internally so it makes sense for them to have a build they control. The general public benefits by having another alternative.

I think it's good to see that Microsoft has interest in Java. It makes the platform stronger if it's not solely carried forward by a single vendor.

It is surely not going to hurt anybody, that’s granted. My question was more like why shall I care about yet another build that is from the exact same sources

First, even being built nominally from the same sources is not a guarantee of the build's contents https://mail.openjdk.java.net/pipermail/jdk8u-dev/2019-May/009330.html

Second, Java 11 is planned for support until 2026. Some vendors will probably wish to extend it

Third, there are certainly PR elements and "embrace" in play

I see I see

anyone finding it harder to learn and/or work on projects after work? Got good suggestions to reset?

Doing something monotonic works for me. Cooking or cleaning for example

The only requirements - it must not be anything creative

stop trying to spend creative energy all the time? fall back to some activity that is more rote but enjoyable?

Is it possible there have been circumstances changes in your life? Are you dealing with more stress for some reason?

not really. just drudgery of pandemic, etc

First, it's okay to take a break. Nothing wrong with just taking it easy at the end of the day for a few weeks. Second, try some inspiring reading material which will make you want to tinker and experiment. A good talk, paper or book which makes you say "I want to try implementing that"

I don’t really have a scientific explanation for it, but I find that to the extent I’m able to abstain from scrolling on social media (especially Twitter), I feel more energetic and less “sapped” in the evenings. TikTok is the exception because a little bit of that can be hilarious/invigorating.

Social media is pretty much designed to make you miserable. We already know it's designed to capture attention. All research on consumer spending shows unhappy people tend to consume more. Draw your own conclusions on what they're incentivised to promote and foster

A big ol’ ➕ for avoiding “doom scrolling” on social media. I only check Twitter/Facebook at lunch time and dinner time and otherwise stay off it a lot more than I used to. As for learning and what my wife refers to as “play work” (as opposed to the “work work” I do during the day), I have definitely found it a bit harder to get motivated around some of that. I’ve taken to taking full days off work and I make myself relax/read/do chores (something mindless) in the morning and then sitting down after lunch and spending a couple of focused hours on whatever “play work” I want in the afternoon. That way I can sleep in if I need to but still treat the afternoon as “work” and then step away from it at dinner time.

I’ve also started to set aside one afternoon each weekend for “play work” / learning. I don’t do it every weekend, but most weekends I’ll spend 2-3 focused hours either Saturday or Sunday after brunch, away from the TV, and away from social media. This past weekend I read Zach Tellman’s “Elements of Clojure” end-to-end again to try to soak more of it up.

But, definitely, the unceasing drudgery of the pandemic is getting to even the most introverted of us at this point 😐

I find it more enjoyable to work on projects after work, its getting through the working day that is difficult!

But when I do want to get away from programming stuff, I like lego. Yes, I'm an adult... but still, building a bit lego thing is pretty great. It's almost mindless but still quite fun / interesting.

One other thing I’d recommend is to not get yourself down if you can only make very little progress. That steady progress, even a line of code is a lot better than just giving up on it. So if you can even add a comment, I’d recommend that.

After having played music for almost my entire life, I stopped practicing for a year and I don’t regret it

I think that’s a great tip. Another one I heard a while back, which seems to work with me, is to deliberately leave some little “known” thing unfinished when you stop for the day or night. Like, you could easily just fix that bug and get the test passing before closing the laptop. But if you leave it for the next time, then when you pick it up again, you’ll immediately have something easy you can fix to build up momentum (since often times, just getting started is the hardtest part).

Yeah, I find that helps me. If I'm not motivated then break down what I want to achieve into small tasks, sometimes very very small tasks. • Create a git repo. • Create an empty project. • blah • Blah But make sure at least one of the tasks is something that I can achieve RIGHT NOW in a few minutes. If the a few of them are like that then great, it's a way to get started. I can tick them off my todo list, which I keep in emacs and I find that sort of motivates me to keep going

I saw something on twitter the other day that i liked. How we turned the point of hobbies to be really good at them instead of enjoying doing them. I've been trying to run more often and just enjoy it. Kinda fits with the mindless thing as well

Running is excellent for putting your conscious worries on the back burner and endorphins

I’ve recently started intermittent fasting (simply skipping breakfast and eating a late lunch). It’s made working on projects/learning easier for because I have more energy throughout the day and am less sleepy after eating.

The early literature on intermittent fasting also suggests other health benefits:

@dpsutton I got a work laptop from my employer. I just close it and open my personal laptop immediately and crunch out 1 hour for my personal projects after my work hours are finished.

i work on an open source project so i just use my single laptop. but i don't think that's the problem its just focusing on stuff at the moment seems more difficult. I have lots of things i want to do I just don't do them. couple compiler papers i want to read, study cassandra source code, figure out how to introduce a SAT solver into work project, etc

with 1 hour a day for long period of time, I managed to bootstrap couple of projects that generate my some additional beer money.

I, unfortunately, have issues focusing on one project. So for me -- juggling projects in parallel is easy.

Anyone studying any foreign languages?

Does DuoLingo count?

I’m doing Portuguese, Swedish, and Japanese.

DuoLingo counts. ^.^ Do you find you are retaining what is being learned via the app?

German in my case. If anyone wants to talk to practice I’m available.

I tried learning French. Went quite far in Duolingo. But without practice, forgot most of it. Are there beginner level podcasts, youtube channels that I can listen to?

For French? I sometimes put on French news radio and try and pick out words here and there. I haven't explored the world of beginner podcasts but there are likely some good ones, maybe some great youtube channels, too.

Would be interested in those if you have a few recommendations

Not looking for dual language podcasts where people are trying to teach. More like listening to news/stories etc. but in simple French.

Yes, for French. A news channel will be a good fit, but is there one where they intentionally use simple language?

I find all the app things are too unstructured for me. I want to actually be taught like the alphabet, numbers, how to conjugate, etc.

Maybe recordings of reading children's stories in French?

but I think they are useful in combination

i think i remember Justice Sotomayor learned english while at Yale or Princeton by reading children's books. I like that strategy

That's mind blowing

That’s what I’m finding. My retention isn’t too terrible for rote stuff, but I find myself wanting a more complete explanation of the why’s and wherefore’s of the grammar and usage and stuff.

like it or not, intentional instruction works :) whole language/absorption works for some

Childrens books are great. I have a French edition of a Charlie Brown comic book somewhere

https://yewtu.be/watch?v=snAhsXyO3Ck

☝️ by CGP Grey

and there’s one weird comic in it. Linus and CB are looking up, and Linus says “Regarde, CB, c’est une avion”, and CB replies, “Non, c’est UN avion.” And Linus says, “Ah? À quoi tu voies ça?” Which in English is, “Look, an airplane (feminine),” “No, it’s an airplane (masculine)” “Really? How can you tell?” And it’s weird because all the other comics are translations of English comics, but English doesn’t use masculine and feminine for inanimate objects, so where the heck did the original joke come from for that?

I've been told that duolingo Portuguese is more Brazilian portuguese than Portugal portguese, and there is a jump from one to the other

DuoLingo Portuguese is definitely Brazilian.

I’ve found some Brazilian videos on Netflix, and it’s fun, but the accent is VERY different.

But I think that’s formal vs informal, not Portuguese vs Brazilian.

Ahh that makes sense

I used to watch TV in portguese because directv broadcasted both versions in south america

I learned the bit of German I know via: * Primarily audio lessons (helped a lot with pronunciation) * Reading German news (http://dw.de - pretty complicated for n00bs) * Forming hypotheses about what I hear/read and confirm them on other sources (like http://dict.leo.org) * Duolingo (for practice) I'm not convinced that that's a particularly efficient way to go.

I've also heard that childrens books are a good way to learn, and makes perfect sense to me: my German is at (most at) a 5-yo's level 😅

I've heard of a chrome extension which slowly starts replacing words in your web pages with the language you choose

And so you gradually pick up Vocab

I find it interesting that very few programs / courses / online things are aimed at teaching adults a language ... we already have plenty of nouns and verbs in our mother tongues we could be leveraging to learn faster. It's kinda hard to find a spare 18 years to go from adolescent to high school grad in a new tongue. Plus, not enough mommies to carry me around while I ask "what's that called?"

I’m doing Portuguese on Duolingo, too. My husband speaks Portuguese (Brazilian), so he’s around to fix my pronunciation.

I tried reading children's stories but quickly lost interest. I found a nice app that had the story in French and the English translation side by side.

That's awesome, real life teacher in the mix ^.^

One language trick I use is to check netflix etc for dubbed versions, English <-> target language, and flip between them, rewind, etc

I’m still averaging about 5-10% comprehension on the Brazilian, but it’s still fun to recognize bits and pieces.

Movies with subtitles in your target language are a great way to passively pick up conversational phrases

https://languagelearningwithnetflix.com works very well. I specifically enjoy the keyboard shortcuts to replay just the previous phrase

That's cool, immersion is powerful

I find the informal phrases are really important for communicating – just knowing how to delay a bit while you think of what you’re trying to say. Learning to just say “so”/“also” in German helped me a lot 🙂

My wife was going to China regularly (to judge cat shows) before the pandemic and so she went to night school to learn Mandarin — but over the last year she’s been losing it slowly. Our local library just added Rosetta Stone online so she’s back to practicing a few days a week. It’s kinda strange to sit here working with my very white, mid-Western wife across the desk from me, headphones on, speaking Mandarin! She’s pretty good with languages. Fluent in French, used to speak some Arabic (she was a belly dancer and toured the Middle East as part of a US troupe several decades ago). She also picked up Spanish via a free adult day class before the pandemic (but she hasn’t had much chance to practice that).

I don’t have the language aptitude. My high school French was never very good (and that’s all gone for lack of practice). My high school German did better because I used to go skiing in German-speaking parts of Europe for about a decade (but, again, it’s pretty much all gone now — I can still read some German but can’t speak it any more).

that's a really cool paragraph. travelling regularly to china to judge cat shows is a heck of a sentence

Wow. A mid-western, mandarin-speaking, belly-dancing cat judge. Now that’s what I call an eclectic skill set!

My English speaking got a bit worse after speaking only Dutch for work for a year. Happy to return to a more international environment soon.

She is very unique 🙂 We’re just about to celebrate our 21st anniversary. Well, the 21st anniversary of our legal wedding. We’ve had five weddings (so far).

congratulations!

I became fluent in Spanish in three years. I'm conversational with anyone on the street. Motivation was the key. Need to have a #1 motivator. To do a little each day.

I also found... Introverts prefer to listen and read. Extroverts, like me, prefer to just start speaking it from day one. Different learning styles.

And grammar is a waste of time. For almost all.

3 years and strong motivation sounds like the recipe. What are things that kept you motivated?

You might enjoy Cal Newport's work where he talks about deep leisure activities :). There's a great part in "How to live on 24 hours a day" (which also talks about leisure): > One of the chief things which my typical man has to learn is that the mental faculties are capable of a continuous hard activity; they do not tire like an arm or a leg. All they want is change—not rest, except in sleep. > The tired feeling hangs heavy over the mighty suburbs of London like a virtuous and melancholy cloud, particularly in winter. > But when you arrange to go to the theatre what happens? You rush to the suburbs; you spare no toil to make yourself glorious in fine raiment; you rush back to town in another train; you keep yourself on the stretch for four hours, if not five;; Essentially - your brain needs change. You have the energy, but the tired feeling will sit over you if you do not do something else. 24 hours a day also talks about training your brain to concentrate (which Cal Newport also talks about a lot). You need to spend time sitting, focusing. The brain is like a muscle in this way.

A couple things. Being in the area where Spanish is needed. And a girlfriend.

I started speaking a few words at a bank... Because it was needed. But changed career paths. So I found a couple non business motivations to keep going.

I think the biggest problem is false expectations. It takes us about six years as a child to grasp a language.... Expecting to learn a language in a year.... Not realistic. Languages are a long term commitment.

I love shadow-cljs and re-frame. Just had this: Had a bug in my app where I was forgetting to increment the eip after some refactoring when the interpreter hit a label / nop. So when I was running the app, it just stopped on a line label foo. I fix the line in the code to increment the eip, save and the app picks up where it left off automagically. (OK, it was a fluke because it was stuck on what was essentially a nop), but still. So neat! I wonder if gifs work...

Is there a decent trello CLI?