Rich Hickey


Rich Hickey is a computer programmer and speaker, known as the creator of the Clojure programming language.

Biography

Clojure is a Lisp dialect built on top of the Java Virtual Machine. He also created or designed ClojureScript and the Extensible Data Notation data format.
Before Clojure, he developed dotLisp, a similar project based on the .[NET Framework]. Hickey has also worked on scheduling systems, broadcast automation, audio analysis and fingerprinting, database design, yield management, exit poll systems, and machine listening.
He spent about 2½ years working on Clojure, much of that time working exclusively on Clojure without external funding, before releasing it to the world in 2007. In 2012, Datomic, a proprietary distributed database was launched which coincided with the incorporation of Cognitect. From 2013 until 2020, he was the chief [technology officer] of Cognitect. Cognitect was acquired by Nubank in 2020, and he was a Distinguished Engineer at Nubank until August 2023 when he announced his retirement from commercial software development.

Quotes

"Programmers know the benefits of everything and the tradeoffs of nothing."

Papers

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