clojure.core/typing - Matt Adereth

Years ago I came across this talk about a guy who built a Clojure wrapper around OpenSCAD in order to design his own keyboard. Potentially relevant: ▶ this video

There is a small clojure project that transpiles clojure to openscad, (if I remember correctly...) link Demonstrated and talked about in this clip: ▶ this video edit: it is a fantastic talk but the part related to this starts at 17:35

There is an attempt to be able to write it in clojure. link Haven't tried it but enjoyed this talk (about 3d printing ergonomic keyboards using the above): ▶ this video

Here's another great video about a procedurally generated keyboard frame clojure.core/typing - Matt Adereth ▶ this video

Very impressive and inspiring. I've been thinking about making a custom keyboard for a while now but, while I have no problems with the electronic and software side of things, I'm a bit overwhelmed with the 3D modelling required. I tried learning Blender but it really feels ill-suited for designing physical objects. The author mentions considering openSCAD but I've heard pretty bad things about it so I haven't really given it a chance yet. The person making the dactyl keyboard had a very interesting talk where he explain how he basically ended up writing his own DSL in clojure on top of openSCAD, maybe I should try that: ▶ this video (if you enjoyed TFA you'll probably like this video as well, it's a step-by-step explanation of how he designed his dream keyboard). Otherwise I suppose I'll have to betray rms and try this freeware Fusion 360 thing.

I recently bought a 3D printer and have enjoyed programing objects in cljoure with scad-clj. link This is biggest project I know of that uses it: link ▶ this video

> That being said I agree that these days the tendency across all languages is to go towards fewer special characters, not more. In this context Perl 6's syntax feels a bit anachronistic. This is just a comeback of a recurring dumb trend based on the fallacy that describing the operations of a program using English words is always superior to using appropriate specialized notation. The core of the fallacy is assuming that because something looks like a familiar English word, people who do not understand programming will understand the corresponding semantics of the operation in the programming language, because they know English. Which is complete nonsense - people who do not understand programming will reason by analogy, and through trial and error end up at a partially wrong and misguided understanding of that operation. English words only start you off with unnecessary baggage in the learning process. It is even worse for people who already know programming. A C for loop is not a JavaScript for loop is not a Python for loop... The details of their semantics are very different, and you will introduce bugs if you just assume "I know how for loops work!" There is nothing new about this trend either; it was the central premise behind COBOL, and a big motivation for BASIC. What BASIC was in the 1980s, Python is today. What is ironic about this trend resurfacing today is that it has never been easier to use special characters - Unicode is everywhere, and even making custom keybo

Thanks for the mention! For anyone interested, all the source and models for the Dactyl keyboard are available here: link There's also a talk I gave a Clojure/conj about it here: ▶ this video

1 Martin Thompson busting myths about hardware and explaining why it's important to know. Mechanical sympathy makes you better, because you know how the code actually runs on the machine and interacts with different layers of memory link 2 Matt Godbolt (the man behind GCC explorer) - Emulating a 6502 system in Javascript Great talk about BBC micro and much more link 3 Matt Adereth - Clojure/typing History of keyboards and a custom keyboard written in Clojure ▶ this video I like the 3 for their content and how each speaker presented the background and their project/hack/ideas. Highly recommend