I just watched Fertile Ground, the Roots of Clojure by Michael Fogus from the first conj at 2010, which I found really exciting. Transcribed to the best of my ability from the final minutes of his talk:
Okay, so Homer describes a scenario where chariot races are occuring. And the chariot technology he describes is actually more advanced than the chariots in his own culture. This is exactly how I feel every time I read a paper or a book from the 70s or the 80s. And it’s just an amazing thing! There’s so much information back there that Clojure is built upon – you could spend a lifetime reading about it, but never exhaust the wealth.
But thankfully for us, Rich has read all of those! And he’s put them together in Clojure. And he’s made a beautiful language. And I think that one day, when we get to the point where we’ve been there a few years and some other sap is going to be at a conference and he’s going to throw up his agenda, which is going to look something like this:
Baker, H. G. 1993. Equal rights for functional objects or, the more things change, the more they are the same (Hickey: “Equal! Equal! Have you read Henry Baker’s great paper on equality and object identity? Anybody? It’s a great paper. It’s still great, and it’s still correct.”)
