Call for Proposals. February 2024 Member Survey

Call for Proposals.

Greetings All! It’s that time again.

Clojurists Together is pleased to announce that we are opening our Q2 2024 funding round for Clojure Open Source Projects. Applications will be accepted through the 4th of March 2024 (midnight Pacific Time). We are looking forward to reviewing your proposals! More information and the application can be found here.

We will be awarding up to $44,000 USD for a total of 6-8 projects. The $2k funding tier is for experimental projects or smaller proposals, whereas the $9k tier is for those that are more established. Projects generally run 3 months, however, the $9K projects can run between 3 and 12 months as needed. We expect projects to start on April 1, 2024.

We surveyed our members in February to find out what types of initiatives they would like us to focus on for this round of funding. Their responses are summarized below. In particular, it was great to see members' feedback relating to how often they used or referred to developers' work we have funded. Check this out!

If you are working on a Clojure open source project or have a new one in mind, especially one mentioned as a focus area for our members, consider applying. Or if you know someone that might be interested, please pass this information along. Let’s get the word out! If you have questions, please contact Kathy Davis at kdavis@clojuriststogether.org.

Our Members Speak: Feedback from the February 2024 Survey.

What areas of the Clojure and ClojureScript ecosystem need support?

• Fractured build tooling. Deps feels like ant from java land still, every project a bit different with all the aliases. Lein was fine
• A Clojure specific job platform would be great?
• Development tools, AI/ML.
• Data science/ML stack. Really don’t want to use python if I can help it.
• Visualisation
• Tooling like CIDER
• Evangelism, Attracting more new users
• In-person conferences in Europe
• The ecosystem could use more beginner material and ergonomic tooling to help beginners get started.
• Newcomer DX. Otherwise, the community will die out.
• The React story has been good at first but React’s ecosystem is evolving and the ClojureScript counterparts aren’t really keeping up. There’s no common best practices for architecting SSR, code splitting etc.
• Cljs build tools, type linters, DX
• Documentation, Building and Test tooling-related areas
• Better ways to build desktop applications.
• Error messages, error messages, error messages. 
• I think the Google Closure Compiler is nearing the end of its life, so we should be supporting efforts that provide a more certain future for ClojureScript.
• Malli schemas, datalog, electric, component
  

What areas of the Clojure and ClojureScript ecosystem are strong? 

• Too many to list! Clojure is just amazing - I just love coding in it.
• Core language and Libs
• Community.  Response from and helpfulness of community members. The community is also very kind.
• Stability, backwards compatibility, performance
• Shadow-cljs works great, most development tooling is quite good
• Clojurian Slack - https://clojure.org/api/cheatsheet
• The overall API stability of the libraries - Babashka - ClojureScript and Shadow-cljs
• IDE support, Linters, Data Analysis/Processing Frameworks Language expressively, ability to write clean code, REPL-oriented development
  

Are there any particular libraries, tools, or projects that are important to you that you would like to see supported?

(Number of mentions in parentheses):

• Malli (8) and code quality tools generally, things that address the misconception that dynamic typing is malpractice relative to stat
• Shadow-cljs (5) 
• Cider (5)
• Babashka  (4) and more libraries useable in this domain (e.g. writing Excel files) 
• Jank (4)
• Clojure-lsp (3)
• com.github.seancorfield/honeysql(3)
• com.github.seancorfield/next.jdbc(3)  
• metosin/reiti(3)
• Clj-kondo (2)
• uix v2 (2)
• Calva (2) for an improved developer experience (not the same as more features). 
• Tech.ml.dataset (2) is looking really good - Chris’s projects need to be included
• Ring (4)
• Re-frame(2)
• Reagent(2)
• Flowstorm (2)
• Integrant (2)
• Borkdude (2)
• I still use lein for new projects because it is easy. It runs tests and the uberjar function is right there.
• (1 each) Pathom and related, Asami, nt, uncomplicate libs, Data science stack, Core.typed, nbb, Clojure-ts-mode, Duct , Taoensso (tufte, timbre, sente), Weavejester (ragtime, crypto-password), Luminus/ring-undertow-adapter, com.fzakaria/slf4j-timbre, Conjure, ‘com.widdindustries/cljc.java-time, Datahike, Migratus, Hiccup, Oz, Scicloj
• I would like a replacement for Oz to render vega/vega-lite, which isn’t maintained anymore, and https://github.com/scicloj/viz.clj exists, which looks promising. Don’t really care for the added layer of hanami in between-on top.
• This Clojure Conj 2023 made me think that Clojure could rock really rock Data Science(2): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MguatDl5u2Q 
• I don’t mind using Java interop now and again, but I would like to avoid having to write extensive Java in Clojure syntax. Currently high on my list: anything bbatsov does (Cider, of course)
• Nikita’s Humble UI is a big deal for me - I hope it will get desktop app development going in a bigger way with Clojure
  

What would you like to be different in the Clojure community in the next 12 months?

• Comments from several members: Grow the size of the community. more outreach, community building, more conferences and meetups
• Supporting new community contributors, thinking about how the tech sector layoffs will impact clj community (where are the jobs?)
• I’d like to see even more newcomers and more support for those newcomers in the form of mentorship and up-to-date documentation, guides, and courses. I’d also like to see more outreach by the Clojure community into broader programming communities to help bring in more newcomers.
• Succession planning. What happens when @whilo, @tonsky, or @taoensso move on from open source dev?
• I think the community is doing well, especially since Nubank upped its support for Clojure devs, as well as the great work you do at Clojurists Together. There’s definitely increased motivation and focus on Clojure with a large number of devs whose tools I use regularly. More of this and I think the Clojure community will continue to be golden.
• Do for clojure what typescript did for javascript and the userbase will get bigger
• A strong competitor to CIDER in the emacs space
• Consider tools / systems using capabilities of Java 21 (threads).
• Optional type system, lsp-support
• That people with design and UI skills help updating Clojure related websites to give a modern impression. Clojure related websites could be clojuredocs.org or planet.clojure.in but really anything with can be considered to be “the face of the Clojure community to the outside”. Just because Lisp is +70 years, doesn’t mean our websites and tools have to look and feel like something from back then. 
• I also hope to finde more blog post about solving problems with Clojure - both big and small. Blog posts inspire me to try new things and push the limits of what is possible with Clojure. I prefer blog posts over videos because they are easy to “scan” and search because of the text format and examples are easily copy-pasted.
• I’d like a full visualisation stack in clojure that didn’t depend upon javascript
• I’d like to see a foundation formed to tackle the things the core team is uninterested in.
• A lighter weight polylith to organize code into components or modules