[tom_b]

Congratulations to Cognitect. Hopefully the acquisition will help Rich's retirement funding. (see 'History of Clojure' for the not-so-insider joke here)

I have had the pleasure of "using Clojure in anger" and for a few years was very dedicated to learning how to use it effectively. This was a significant step up for my general programming skills and the simplicity of the language often saved me from myself with respect to bad design or choices in code. Whatever programmer "maturity" I can claim is probably due to Clojure and teaching introductory programming and databases (not with Clojure and Datomic to be clear).

This acquisition is more abstractly interesting to me in that a VERY dedicated Clojure/Datomic company made it. We didn't see here, for lack of a better example, a FAANG company grabbing Cognitect. That may have been a choice! Maybe Cognitect went with an acquisition where they retain a high degree of autonomy with the benefits of being acquired.

I never made the leap into a larger organization with Clojure at its core. I was able to use Clojure only in my small shop where I have a small degree of autonomy on development language choice. For a few years, I was somewhat actively seeking an opportunity to join a larger Clojure-oriented team but struggled to gain much traction when applying to openings. It seems possible to build a Clojure career, but I've not been very good at that.

[keeganpoppen]

(for anyone who doesn't get it, Rich funded Clojure development via his retirement savings from 2005 until he ran out in 2009 https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3386321)

[microcolonel]

Rich Hickey is an artist and a hero, I owe him so much.

[gdsdfe]

Oh wow! I didn't know that

[swyx]

gotta ask - what did he do after 2009? is he alright now?