ANN: Clojure Atlas (preview!)
Chas Emerick
Today, I’m opening up a “preview” site for Clojure Atlas [1], a new side project of mine that I’m particularly excited about.
Clojure Atlas is an experiment in visualizing a programming language and its standard library. I’ve long been frustrated with the limitations of text in programming, and this is my attempt to do something about it. From the site:
While Clojure Atlas has a number of raisons d’être, it fundamentally exists because I’ve consistently thought that typical programming language and API references – being, in general, walls of text and alphabetized links – are really poor at conveying the most important information: not the minutiae of function signatures and class hierarchies, but the stuff that’s “between the lines”, the context and interrelationships between such things that too often are only discovered and internalized by bumping into them in the course of programming. This is especially true if we’re learning a language and its libraries (really, a never-ending process given the march of progress), and what’s standing in our way is not, for example, being able to easily access the documentation or signature for a particular known function, but discovering the mere existence of a previously-unknown function that is perfect for our needs at a given moment.
This is just a preview – all sizzle and no steak, as it were. I’m working away at the ontology that drives the visualization and user experience, but I want to get some more early (quiet) feedback from a few folks to make sure I’m not committing egregious sins in various ways before throwing open the doors to the world.
In the meantime, if you’re really interested, follow @ClojureAtlas [2], and/or sign up for email updates [3] on the site.
Ambrose Bonnaire-Sergeant
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Paul deGrandis
think about the language as I'm working with it (based on the pictures
and descriptions). This is a nice niche piece of documentation for
the community, power users, and newly emerging Clojure shops.
Is your freemium model limiting namespaces/content. functionality, or
both?
Paul
On Apr 19, 9:27 am, Ambrose Bonnaire-Sergeant
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > Today, I’m opening up a “preview” site for Clojure Atlas [1], a new side
> > project of mine that I’m particularly excited about.
>
> > Clojure Atlas is an experiment in visualizing a programming language and
> > its standard library. I’ve long been frustrated with the limitations of
> > text in programming, and this is my attempt to do something about it. From
> > the site:
>
> > and API references – being, in general, walls of text and alphabetized links
> > – are really poor at conveying the most important information: not the
> > minutiae of function signatures and class hierarchies, but the stuff that’s
> > “between the lines”, the context and interrelationships between such things
> > that too often are only discovered and internalized by bumping into them in
> > the course of programming. This is especially true if we’re learning a
> > language and its libraries (really, a never-ending process given the march
> > of progress), and what’s standing in our way is not, for example, being able
> > to easily access the documentation or signature for a particular known
rob levy
Aaron Bedra
-- Cheers, Aaron Bedra -- Clojure/core http://clojure.com
On 04/19/2011 01:10 PM, rob levy wrote:
This seems great.� The $20 bothers me, not because I don't want to pay it, I would gladly donate this meager amount for such a useful resource.� There's just something in poor taste about not making this open to everyone.� And there's an implicit camaraderie and good will that developer communities have come to expect that makes this paywall seem weird and unwelcoming.� If you framed this as a donation, with access not contingent on donation, it would be perfectly fine-- and people might actually use it.
On Tue, Apr 19, 2011 at 12:45 PM, Paul deGrandis <paul.de...@gmail.com> wrote:
This is a great piece visualization for Clojure and very much how I
think about the language as I'm working with it (based on the pictures
and descriptions). �This is a nice niche piece of documentation for
the community, power users, and newly emerging Clojure shops.
Is your freemium model limiting namespaces/content. functionality, or
both?
Paul
On Apr 19, 9:27�am, Ambrose Bonnaire-Sergeant
> On Wed, Apr 20, 2011 at 12:19 AM, Chas Emerick <cemer...@snowtide.com>wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > Today, I�m opening up a �preview� site for Clojure Atlas [1], a new side
> > project of mine that I�m particularly excited about.
>
> > Clojure Atlas is an experiment in visualizing a programming language and
> > its standard library. �I�ve long been frustrated with the limitations of
> > text in programming, and this is my attempt to do something about it. �From
> > the site:
>
> > While Clojure Atlas has a number of *raisons d��tre*, it fundamentally
> > exists because I�ve consistently thought that typical programming language
> > and API references � being, in general, walls of text and alphabetized links
> > � are really poor at conveying the most important information: not the
> > minutiae of function signatures and class hierarchies, but the stuff that�s
> > �between the lines�, the context and interrelationships between such things
> > that too often are only discovered and internalized by bumping into them in
> > the course of programming. This is especially true if we�re learning a
> > language and its libraries (really, a never-ending process given the march
> > of progress), and what�s standing in our way is not, for example, being able
> > to easily access the documentation or signature for a particular known
> > function, but *discovering* the mere existence of a previously-unknown
> > function that is perfect for our needs at a given moment.
>
> > This is just a preview � all sizzle and no steak, as it were. �I�m working
> > away at the ontology that drives the visualization and user experience, but
> > I want to get some more early (quiet) feedback from a few folks to make sure
> > I�m not committing egregious sins in various ways before throwing open the
> > doors to the world.
>
> > In the meantime, if you�re really interested, follow @ClojureAtlas [2],
Aaron Bedra
Chas Emerick
I would pay $20 per project for this easily. You did some great work (from the looks of it anyways) and you should get the financial reward from it. This isn't a charity, it's a service, and I would treat it as such. Keep up the awesome!
rob levy
Also, when I mean "per project", I mean that in the sense that I am working with different customers who would find it valuable and pay for the access for them :)
On 04/19/2011 01:23 PM, Aaron Bedra wrote:
I would pay $20 per project for this easily. You did some great work (from the looks of it anyways) and you should get the financial reward from it. This isn't a charity, it's a service, and I would treat it as such. Keep up the awesome!
-- Cheers, Aaron Bedra -- Clojure/core http://clojure.com
Brenton
I can't wait to try it out (and pay for it).
Chas Emerick
On Apr 19, 2011, at 1:10 PM, rob levy wrote:
> This seems great. The $20 bothers me, not because I don't want to pay it, I would gladly donate this meager amount for such a useful resource. There's just something in poor taste about not making this open to everyone. And there's an implicit camaraderie and good will that developer communities have come to expect that makes this paywall seem weird and unwelcoming. If you framed this as a donation, with access not contingent on donation, it would be perfectly fine-- and people might actually use it.
If people feel that the work is worthwhile, they'll pay, if not, they won't. I suspect that I'll end up sinking about a full man-month into the ontology when all is said and done (with incremental improvements as later versions of Clojure are released, etc) so I don't feel badly about charging real money for that, and being honest and direct about the nature of the transaction. Nevermind the effort around the UX, etc.
Really, I'd wish more developers would charge reasonable amounts for tools that they work on for free in their spare time; perhaps more of them would work on them full-time, and we'd have better tools!
Anyway, it's just a preview site at the moment -- there's no "paywall" anywhere.
- Chas
Ulises
subscribe form. Is this the right behaviour?
U
Chas Emerick
> This is a great piece visualization for Clojure and very much how I
> think about the language as I'm working with it (based on the pictures
> and descriptions). This is a nice niche piece of documentation for
> the community, power users, and newly emerging Clojure shops.
Thank you for the vote of confidence. I hope the final experience matches your expectations.
> Is your freemium model limiting namespaces/content. functionality, or
> both?
I've not yet decided what non-members will see; there will probably be some experimentation around that. I'd like it to be useful on its own merits, but I obviously would like to see people that would get value out of the full version join up. I'm guessing some kind of nagware will be my baseline (e.g. traverse N nodes in the graph, and you start to get nag dialogs), and we'll see how it goes from there.
- Chas
rob levy
--
Chas Emerick
On Apr 19, 2011, at 1:42 PM, Ulises wrote:
> I just clicked on "Try it" and only got to a short blurb and a
> subscribe form. Is this the right behaviour?
Indeed. As I say nearby, the app isn't quite ready for public consumption yet. I put the site up now so as to garner some early feedback and indications of interest.
If you subscribe to updates by email or follow @ClojureAtlas, you'll know in short order when there's something real to use.
Sorry for any confusion! :-)
- Chas
Chas Emerick
Andy Fingerhut
Fred Concklin
for free if people meet a certain threshold for involvement in the
clojure ecosystem. This also might incentivize clojure development and
allow you to offer it free to authors whose libraries are in your graph.
https://github.com/mmcgrana/gitcred
Chas Emerick <ceme...@snowtide.com> writes:
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- Fred Concklin
Meikel Brandmeyer
On 20 Apr., 02:31, Fred Concklin <fredconck...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Just a thought, but you could use something like gitcred to give it away
> for free if people meet a certain threshold for involvement in the
> clojure ecosystem. This also might incentivize clojure development and
> allow you to offer it free to authors whose libraries are in your graph.
included? github alone is certainly not sufficient. Also scan
gitorious? bitbucket? google code? postings to the list(s)?
stackoverflow?
Sincerely
Meikel