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Are We There Yet - Rich Hickey

Zhang Jian · 24.4K views · 2019-07-29 · 1:10:05

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Overview

Rich Hickey's talk on time, state, identity and values, arguing that mutable object-oriented modeling fits the world poorly. It lays out the thinking behind Clojure's approach to data and change.

On Hacker News

Recommended as one of the best explanations of why Clojure and a functional, immutable approach to state exist.

Recommended by 4 HN people across 5 months · HN mentions 2021–2026

Topics

Functional programmingSoftware architecture & design
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rich hickeyclojureimmutabilityoop critique

What people said

raspasov · 2021-06 · Strong recommendation

I personally started with this talk by Rich Hickey (person who made Clojure) [VIDEO] One of the best "why Clojure" talks that I've seen, especially for somebody coming from an OOP perspective, like myself.

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onlyrealcuzzo · 2026-06 · Recommendation

Rich Hickey's: Are We There Yet may be interesting to any one here: [VIDEO] I found this to be one of the more interesting talks I've watched. Like you (I think) - I love functional languages. But there's a problem I can't really figure out how to articulate where they reach a level where they stop "just working" imo. Maybe it's just me being too dumb.

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joshlemer · 2022-04 · Recommendation

Rich Hickey made a great talk on this in 2009 [VIDEO] An other way to think about it is that the programs we write do not literally simulate entities (users, other domain objects like books, students, professors, classes, etc). Our software simulates the record keeping devices that store /protect information regarding these entities. We are most of the time writing information processing systems, not simulation systems and information accumulates, rather than updates in places. Like, e.g. when there's a new president elected, we don't all go out with our erasers and remove all references to change sentences from "The President is Donald Trump" to say "The President is Joe Biden", instead we accumulate new facts without remembering the old.

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Sources

Video by Zhang Jian, played through YouTube.

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