xificurC/electric.html

## electric.html
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en" xml:lang="en">
<head>
<!-- 2023-03-16 Št 08:40 -->
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" />
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1" />
<title>Why Electric Clojure is a big deal</title>
<meta name="author" content="Peter Nagy" />
<meta name="generator" content="Org Mode" />
<style>
  #content { max-width: 60em; margin: auto; }
  .title  { text-align: center;
             margin-bottom: .2em; }
  .subtitle { text-align: center;
              font-size: medium;
              font-weight: bold;
              margin-top:0; }
  .todo   { font-family: monospace; color: red; }
  .done   { font-family: monospace; color: green; }
  .priority { font-family: monospace; color: orange; }
  .tag    { background-color: #eee; font-family: monospace;
            padding: 2px; font-size: 80%; font-weight: normal; }
  .timestamp { color: #bebebe; }
  .timestamp-kwd { color: #5f9ea0; }
  .org-right  { margin-left: auto; margin-right: 0px;  text-align: right; }
  .org-left   { margin-left: 0px;  margin-right: auto; text-align: left; }
  .org-center { margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center; }
  .underline { text-decoration: underline; }
  #postamble p, #preamble p { font-size: 90%; margin: .2em; }
  p.verse { margin-left: 3%; }
  pre {
    border: 1px solid #e6e6e6;
    border-radius: 3px;
    background-color: #f2f2f2;
    padding: 8pt;
    font-family: monospace;
    overflow: auto;
    margin: 1.2em;
  }
  pre.src {
    position: relative;
    overflow: auto;
  }
  pre.src:before {
    display: none;
    position: absolute;
    top: -8px;
    right: 12px;
    padding: 3px;
    color: #555;
    background-color: #f2f2f299;
  }
  pre.src:hover:before { display: inline; margin-top: 14px;}
  /* Languages per Org manual */
  pre.src-asymptote:before { content: 'Asymptote'; }
  pre.src-awk:before { content: 'Awk'; }
  pre.src-authinfo::before { content: 'Authinfo'; }
  pre.src-C:before { content: 'C'; }
  /* pre.src-C++ doesn't work in CSS */
  pre.src-clojure:before { content: 'Clojure'; }
  pre.src-css:before { content: 'CSS'; }
  pre.src-D:before { content: 'D'; }
  pre.src-ditaa:before { content: 'ditaa'; }
  pre.src-dot:before { content: 'Graphviz'; }
  pre.src-calc:before { content: 'Emacs Calc'; }
  pre.src-emacs-lisp:before { content: 'Emacs Lisp'; }
  pre.src-fortran:before { content: 'Fortran'; }
  pre.src-gnuplot:before { content: 'gnuplot'; }
  pre.src-haskell:before { content: 'Haskell'; }
  pre.src-hledger:before { content: 'hledger'; }
  pre.src-java:before { content: 'Java'; }
  pre.src-js:before { content: 'Javascript'; }
  pre.src-latex:before { content: 'LaTeX'; }
  pre.src-ledger:before { content: 'Ledger'; }
  pre.src-lisp:before { content: 'Lisp'; }
  pre.src-lilypond:before { content: 'Lilypond'; }
  pre.src-lua:before { content: 'Lua'; }
  pre.src-matlab:before { content: 'MATLAB'; }
  pre.src-mscgen:before { content: 'Mscgen'; }
  pre.src-ocaml:before { content: 'Objective Caml'; }
  pre.src-octave:before { content: 'Octave'; }
  pre.src-org:before { content: 'Org mode'; }
  pre.src-oz:before { content: 'OZ'; }
  pre.src-plantuml:before { content: 'Plantuml'; }
  pre.src-processing:before { content: 'Processing.js'; }
  pre.src-python:before { content: 'Python'; }
  pre.src-R:before { content: 'R'; }
  pre.src-ruby:before { content: 'Ruby'; }
  pre.src-sass:before { content: 'Sass'; }
  pre.src-scheme:before { content: 'Scheme'; }
  pre.src-screen:before { content: 'Gnu Screen'; }
  pre.src-sed:before { content: 'Sed'; }
  pre.src-sh:before { content: 'shell'; }
  pre.src-sql:before { content: 'SQL'; }
  pre.src-sqlite:before { content: 'SQLite'; }
  /* additional languages in org.el's org-babel-load-languages alist */
  pre.src-forth:before { content: 'Forth'; }
  pre.src-io:before { content: 'IO'; }
  pre.src-J:before { content: 'J'; }
  pre.src-makefile:before { content: 'Makefile'; }
  pre.src-maxima:before { content: 'Maxima'; }
  pre.src-perl:before { content: 'Perl'; }
  pre.src-picolisp:before { content: 'Pico Lisp'; }
  pre.src-scala:before { content: 'Scala'; }
  pre.src-shell:before { content: 'Shell Script'; }
  pre.src-ebnf2ps:before { content: 'ebfn2ps'; }
  /* additional language identifiers per "defun org-babel-execute"
       in ob-*.el */
  pre.src-cpp:before  { content: 'C++'; }
  pre.src-abc:before  { content: 'ABC'; }
  pre.src-coq:before  { content: 'Coq'; }
  pre.src-groovy:before  { content: 'Groovy'; }
  /* additional language identifiers from org-babel-shell-names in
     ob-shell.el: ob-shell is the only babel language using a lambda to put
     the execution function name together. */
  pre.src-bash:before  { content: 'bash'; }
  pre.src-csh:before  { content: 'csh'; }
  pre.src-ash:before  { content: 'ash'; }
  pre.src-dash:before  { content: 'dash'; }
  pre.src-ksh:before  { content: 'ksh'; }
  pre.src-mksh:before  { content: 'mksh'; }
  pre.src-posh:before  { content: 'posh'; }
  /* Additional Emacs modes also supported by the LaTeX listings package */
  pre.src-ada:before { content: 'Ada'; }
  pre.src-asm:before { content: 'Assembler'; }
  pre.src-caml:before { content: 'Caml'; }
  pre.src-delphi:before { content: 'Delphi'; }
  pre.src-html:before { content: 'HTML'; }
  pre.src-idl:before { content: 'IDL'; }
  pre.src-mercury:before { content: 'Mercury'; }
  pre.src-metapost:before { content: 'MetaPost'; }
  pre.src-modula-2:before { content: 'Modula-2'; }
  pre.src-pascal:before { content: 'Pascal'; }
  pre.src-ps:before { content: 'PostScript'; }
  pre.src-prolog:before { content: 'Prolog'; }
  pre.src-simula:before { content: 'Simula'; }
  pre.src-tcl:before { content: 'tcl'; }
  pre.src-tex:before { content: 'TeX'; }
  pre.src-plain-tex:before { content: 'Plain TeX'; }
  pre.src-verilog:before { content: 'Verilog'; }
  pre.src-vhdl:before { content: 'VHDL'; }
  pre.src-xml:before { content: 'XML'; }
  pre.src-nxml:before { content: 'XML'; }
  /* add a generic configuration mode; LaTeX export needs an additional
     (add-to-list 'org-latex-listings-langs '(conf " ")) in .emacs */
  pre.src-conf:before { content: 'Configuration File'; }

  table { border-collapse:collapse; }
  caption.t-above { caption-side: top; }
  caption.t-bottom { caption-side: bottom; }
  td, th { vertical-align:top;  }
  th.org-right  { text-align: center;  }
  th.org-left   { text-align: center;   }
  th.org-center { text-align: center; }
  td.org-right  { text-align: right;  }
  td.org-left   { text-align: left;   }
  td.org-center { text-align: center; }
  dt { font-weight: bold; }
  .footpara { display: inline; }
  .footdef  { margin-bottom: 1em; }
  .figure { padding: 1em; }
  .figure p { text-align: center; }
  .equation-container {
    display: table;
    text-align: center;
    width: 100%;
  }
  .equation {
    vertical-align: middle;
  }
  .equation-label {
    display: table-cell;
    text-align: right;
    vertical-align: middle;
  }
  .inlinetask {
    padding: 10px;
    border: 2px solid gray;
    margin: 10px;
    background: #ffffcc;
  }
  #org-div-home-and-up
   { text-align: right; font-size: 70%; white-space: nowrap; }
  textarea { overflow-x: auto; }
  .linenr { font-size: smaller }
  .code-highlighted { background-color: #ffff00; }
  .org-info-js_info-navigation { border-style: none; }
  #org-info-js_console-label
    { font-size: 10px; font-weight: bold; white-space: nowrap; }
  .org-info-js_search-highlight
    { background-color: #ffff00; color: #000000; font-weight: bold; }
  .org-svg { }
</style>
</head>
<body>
<div id="content" class="content">
<h1 class="title">Why Electric Clojure is a big deal</h1>
<div id="table-of-contents" role="doc-toc">
<h2>Table of Contents</h2>
<div id="text-table-of-contents" role="doc-toc">
<ul>
<li><a href="#orgf94278e">1. Reactive language</a></li>
<li><a href="#org01528b0">2. Multi-peer language</a></li>
<li><a href="#org0a76740">3. Conclusion</a></li>
</ul>
</div>
</div>
<p>
Disclaimer: I work for Hyperfiddle.
</p>

<p>
<a href="https://github.com/hyperfiddle/electric">Electric Clojure</a> is out. The clojure(script) community is excited! Our primary
target is dynamic web applications, so users naturally compare it to React and
other frontend frameworks. I&rsquo;ll claim no framework is <b>even close</b> to feature
parity. Let me explain the key differences.
</p>

<div id="outline-container-orgf94278e" class="outline-2">
<h2 id="orgf94278e"><span class="section-number-2">1.</span> Reactive language</h2>
<div class="outline-text-2" id="text-1">
<p>
React, Solid and others provide a reactive framework. We see signals and similar
abstractions pop up and an API around them. Electric Clojure is a reactive
<i>language</i>. It looks and feels like Clojure but it is a new language. <code>if</code> is a
reactive if, <code>try</code> is a reactive try. This means everything is a signal! The
simplicity this brings to the user is a big thing. You don&rsquo;t have to mix
Javascript code, JSX code, framework code - it&rsquo;s one thing! Less is more.
</p>
</div>
</div>

<div id="outline-container-org01528b0" class="outline-2">
<h2 id="org01528b0"><span class="section-number-2">2.</span> Multi-peer language</h2>
<div class="outline-text-2" id="text-2">
<p>
I don&rsquo;t think anyone understands this fully yet. Electric Clojure compiles a
single program and distributes it across 2 peers. It takes your client/server
code, splits it in half and <i>derives</i> all the network communication. What people
think of here is request/response and RPC, because that&rsquo;s what they know. But
Electric Clojure compiles down to a graph and runs everything concurrently.
Let&rsquo;s disect a toy example:
</p>

<div class="org-src-container">
<pre class="src src-clojure"><span style="color: #51afef;">(</span><span style="color: #ECBE7B;">e</span>/client
  <span style="color: #c678dd;">(</span><span style="color: #51afef;">let</span> <span style="color: #98be65;">[</span>saying <span style="color: #a9a1e1;">(</span>get-saying-from-user<span style="color: #a9a1e1;">)</span><span style="color: #98be65;">]</span>
    <span style="color: #98be65;">(</span><span style="color: #ECBE7B;">e</span>/server <span style="color: #a9a1e1;">(</span><span style="color: #51afef;">let</span> <span style="color: #51afef;">[</span>id <span style="color: #c678dd;">(</span>gen-next-db-id<span style="color: #c678dd;">)</span><span style="color: #51afef;">]</span>
                <span style="color: #51afef;">(</span>transact-saying! id saying<span style="color: #51afef;">)</span><span style="color: #a9a1e1;">)</span><span style="color: #98be65;">)</span><span style="color: #c678dd;">)</span><span style="color: #51afef;">)</span>
</pre>
</div>

<p>
<code>get-saying-from-user</code> is a user input on the client side. <code>gen-next-db-id</code> is a
database request for a new ID on the server side. There is no dependency between
these 2 calls. That means they will run concurrently! <code>transact-saying!</code> will
wait for both to finish.
</p>

<p>
Think about a way to achieve the same behavior in Javascript. The best I can
think of is
</p>

<div class="org-src-container">
<pre class="src src-javascript"><span style="color: #51afef;">const</span> [<span style="color: #dcaeea;">saying</span>, <span style="color: #dcaeea;">id</span>] = <span style="color: #51afef;">await</span> Promise.all([getSayingFromUser(), genNextDbId()]);
<span style="color: #51afef;">await</span> transactSaying(id, saying);
</pre>
</div>

<p>
which is operationally not the same thing:
</p>

<ul class="org-ul">
<li>the <code>id</code> roundtrips for no reason</li>
<li>if a promise fails the second one stays running even though we don&rsquo;t care
anymore</li>
</ul>

<p>
It&rsquo;s even worse from the coding perspective. To implement the above you have to:
</p>

<ul class="org-ul">
<li>create a <code>genNextDbID</code> on the frontend. This will have to issue an e.g. HTTP
or websocket request</li>
<li>now you need to open the backend code and add a request handler</li>
</ul>

<p>
This will result in a lot of boilerplate, just to orchestrate the network
roundtrip we didn&rsquo;t even care about! The ID could have stayed on the backend. &ldquo;I
know how to fix that!&rdquo;, you shout.
</p>

<div class="org-src-container">
<pre class="src src-javascript"><span style="color: #51afef;">const</span> <span style="color: #dcaeea;">requestId</span> = <span style="color: #51afef;">new</span> <span style="color: #ECBE7B;">RequestId</span>();
genNextDbId(requestId);
<span style="color: #51afef;">const</span> <span style="color: #dcaeea;">saying</span> = <span style="color: #51afef;">await</span> getSayingFromUser();
<span style="color: #51afef;">await</span> transactSaying(saying, requestId);
</pre>
</div>

<p>
Now the server can tuck the ID away under the <code>requestId</code> key and reconcile the
data. However this just creates more trouble:
</p>

<ul class="org-ul">
<li><code>genNextDbId</code> is now fire and forget. What if it fails?</li>
<li>what if <code>getSayingFromUser</code> fails? How long will the server keep the generated
id around?</li>
<li>how much more orchestration code did we have to write on both peers?</li>
</ul>

<p>
I hope you start to see a pattern here. Any code you come up will involve
writing a lot of boilerplate code and thinking of tons of edge cases.
</p>

<p>
Now look at the Electric Clojure implementation again. It&rsquo;s dead-simple code to
write and <b>none</b> of these concerns exist! This is why we compare it to garbage
collection - managed memory solves a lot of memory orchestration for you in a
safe way and allows new patterns that weren&rsquo;t possible with manual memory
management. The same applies here for the network - you don&rsquo;t write manual
network orchestration code and get optimal concurrency as a bonus.
</p>
</div>
</div>

<div id="outline-container-org0a76740" class="outline-2">
<h2 id="org0a76740"><span class="section-number-2">3.</span> Conclusion</h2>
<div class="outline-text-2" id="text-3">
<p>
Electric Clojure is a big deal, even if you are not a Clojure(script)
programmer. Of course, this is just the beginning! There&rsquo;s more exciting work
underway, so stay tuned!
</p>
</div>
</div>
</body>
</html>
	<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
	<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
	"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
	<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en" xml:lang="en">
	<head>
	<!-- 2023-03-16 Št 08:40 -->
	<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" />
	<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1" />
	<title>Why Electric Clojure is a big deal</title>
	<meta name="author" content="Peter Nagy" />
	<meta name="generator" content="Org Mode" />
	<style>
	#content { max-width: 60em; margin: auto; }
	.title { text-align: center;
	margin-bottom: .2em; }
	.subtitle { text-align: center;
	font-size: medium;
	font-weight: bold;
	margin-top:0; }
	.todo { font-family: monospace; color: red; }
	.done { font-family: monospace; color: green; }
	.priority { font-family: monospace; color: orange; }
	.tag { background-color: #eee; font-family: monospace;
	padding: 2px; font-size: 80%; font-weight: normal; }
	.timestamp { color: #bebebe; }
	.timestamp-kwd { color: #5f9ea0; }
	.org-right { margin-left: auto; margin-right: 0px; text-align: right; }
	.org-left { margin-left: 0px; margin-right: auto; text-align: left; }
	.org-center { margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center; }
	.underline { text-decoration: underline; }
	#postamble p, #preamble p { font-size: 90%; margin: .2em; }
	p.verse { margin-left: 3%; }
	pre {
	border: 1px solid #e6e6e6;
	border-radius: 3px;
	background-color: #f2f2f2;
	padding: 8pt;
	font-family: monospace;
	overflow: auto;
	margin: 1.2em;
	}
	pre.src {
	position: relative;
	overflow: auto;
	}
	pre.src:before {
	display: none;
	position: absolute;
	top: -8px;
	right: 12px;
	padding: 3px;
	color: #555;
	background-color: #f2f2f299;
	}
	pre.src:hover:before { display: inline; margin-top: 14px;}
	/* Languages per Org manual */
	pre.src-asymptote:before { content: 'Asymptote'; }
	pre.src-awk:before { content: 'Awk'; }
	pre.src-authinfo::before { content: 'Authinfo'; }
	pre.src-C:before { content: 'C'; }
	/* pre.src-C++ doesn't work in CSS */
	pre.src-clojure:before { content: 'Clojure'; }
	pre.src-css:before { content: 'CSS'; }
	pre.src-D:before { content: 'D'; }
	pre.src-ditaa:before { content: 'ditaa'; }
	pre.src-dot:before { content: 'Graphviz'; }
	pre.src-calc:before { content: 'Emacs Calc'; }
	pre.src-emacs-lisp:before { content: 'Emacs Lisp'; }
	pre.src-fortran:before { content: 'Fortran'; }
	pre.src-gnuplot:before { content: 'gnuplot'; }
	pre.src-haskell:before { content: 'Haskell'; }
	pre.src-hledger:before { content: 'hledger'; }
	pre.src-java:before { content: 'Java'; }
	pre.src-js:before { content: 'Javascript'; }
	pre.src-latex:before { content: 'LaTeX'; }
	pre.src-ledger:before { content: 'Ledger'; }
	pre.src-lisp:before { content: 'Lisp'; }
	pre.src-lilypond:before { content: 'Lilypond'; }
	pre.src-lua:before { content: 'Lua'; }
	pre.src-matlab:before { content: 'MATLAB'; }
	pre.src-mscgen:before { content: 'Mscgen'; }
	pre.src-ocaml:before { content: 'Objective Caml'; }
	pre.src-octave:before { content: 'Octave'; }
	pre.src-org:before { content: 'Org mode'; }
	pre.src-oz:before { content: 'OZ'; }
	pre.src-plantuml:before { content: 'Plantuml'; }
	pre.src-processing:before { content: 'Processing.js'; }
	pre.src-python:before { content: 'Python'; }
	pre.src-R:before { content: 'R'; }
	pre.src-ruby:before { content: 'Ruby'; }
	pre.src-sass:before { content: 'Sass'; }
	pre.src-scheme:before { content: 'Scheme'; }
	pre.src-screen:before { content: 'Gnu Screen'; }
	pre.src-sed:before { content: 'Sed'; }
	pre.src-sh:before { content: 'shell'; }
	pre.src-sql:before { content: 'SQL'; }
	pre.src-sqlite:before { content: 'SQLite'; }
	/* additional languages in org.el's org-babel-load-languages alist */
	pre.src-forth:before { content: 'Forth'; }
	pre.src-io:before { content: 'IO'; }
	pre.src-J:before { content: 'J'; }
	pre.src-makefile:before { content: 'Makefile'; }
	pre.src-maxima:before { content: 'Maxima'; }
	pre.src-perl:before { content: 'Perl'; }
	pre.src-picolisp:before { content: 'Pico Lisp'; }
	pre.src-scala:before { content: 'Scala'; }
	pre.src-shell:before { content: 'Shell Script'; }
	pre.src-ebnf2ps:before { content: 'ebfn2ps'; }
	/* additional language identifiers per "defun org-babel-execute"
	in ob-.el /
	pre.src-cpp:before { content: 'C++'; }
	pre.src-abc:before { content: 'ABC'; }
	pre.src-coq:before { content: 'Coq'; }
	pre.src-groovy:before { content: 'Groovy'; }
	/* additional language identifiers from org-babel-shell-names in
	ob-shell.el: ob-shell is the only babel language using a lambda to put
	the execution function name together. */
	pre.src-bash:before { content: 'bash'; }
	pre.src-csh:before { content: 'csh'; }
	pre.src-ash:before { content: 'ash'; }
	pre.src-dash:before { content: 'dash'; }
	pre.src-ksh:before { content: 'ksh'; }
	pre.src-mksh:before { content: 'mksh'; }
	pre.src-posh:before { content: 'posh'; }
	/* Additional Emacs modes also supported by the LaTeX listings package */
	pre.src-ada:before { content: 'Ada'; }
	pre.src-asm:before { content: 'Assembler'; }
	pre.src-caml:before { content: 'Caml'; }
	pre.src-delphi:before { content: 'Delphi'; }
	pre.src-html:before { content: 'HTML'; }
	pre.src-idl:before { content: 'IDL'; }
	pre.src-mercury:before { content: 'Mercury'; }
	pre.src-metapost:before { content: 'MetaPost'; }
	pre.src-modula-2:before { content: 'Modula-2'; }
	pre.src-pascal:before { content: 'Pascal'; }
	pre.src-ps:before { content: 'PostScript'; }
	pre.src-prolog:before { content: 'Prolog'; }
	pre.src-simula:before { content: 'Simula'; }
	pre.src-tcl:before { content: 'tcl'; }
	pre.src-tex:before { content: 'TeX'; }
	pre.src-plain-tex:before { content: 'Plain TeX'; }
	pre.src-verilog:before { content: 'Verilog'; }
	pre.src-vhdl:before { content: 'VHDL'; }
	pre.src-xml:before { content: 'XML'; }
	pre.src-nxml:before { content: 'XML'; }
	/* add a generic configuration mode; LaTeX export needs an additional
	(add-to-list 'org-latex-listings-langs '(conf " ")) in .emacs */
	pre.src-conf:before { content: 'Configuration File'; }

	table { border-collapse:collapse; }
	caption.t-above { caption-side: top; }
	caption.t-bottom { caption-side: bottom; }
	td, th { vertical-align:top; }
	th.org-right { text-align: center; }
	th.org-left { text-align: center; }
	th.org-center { text-align: center; }
	td.org-right { text-align: right; }
	td.org-left { text-align: left; }
	td.org-center { text-align: center; }
	dt { font-weight: bold; }
	.footpara { display: inline; }
	.footdef { margin-bottom: 1em; }
	.figure { padding: 1em; }
	.figure p { text-align: center; }
	.equation-container {
	display: table;
	text-align: center;
	width: 100%;
	}
	.equation {
	vertical-align: middle;
	}
	.equation-label {
	display: table-cell;
	text-align: right;
	vertical-align: middle;
	}
	.inlinetask {
	padding: 10px;
	border: 2px solid gray;
	margin: 10px;
	background: #ffffcc;
	}
	#org-div-home-and-up
	{ text-align: right; font-size: 70%; white-space: nowrap; }
	textarea { overflow-x: auto; }
	.linenr { font-size: smaller }
	.code-highlighted { background-color: #ffff00; }
	.org-info-js_info-navigation { border-style: none; }
	#org-info-js_console-label
	{ font-size: 10px; font-weight: bold; white-space: nowrap; }
	.org-info-js_search-highlight
	{ background-color: #ffff00; color: #000000; font-weight: bold; }
	.org-svg { }
	</style>
	</head>
	<body>
	<div id="content" class="content">
	<h1 class="title">Why Electric Clojure is a big deal</h1>
	<div id="table-of-contents" role="doc-toc">
	<h2>Table of Contents</h2>
	<div id="text-table-of-contents" role="doc-toc">
	<ul>
	<li><a href="#orgf94278e">1. Reactive language</a></li>
	<li><a href="#org01528b0">2. Multi-peer language</a></li>
	<li><a href="#org0a76740">3. Conclusion</a></li>
	</ul>
	</div>
	</div>
	<p>
	Disclaimer: I work for Hyperfiddle.
	</p>

	<p>
	<a href="https://github.com/hyperfiddle/electric">Electric Clojure</a> is out. The clojure(script) community is excited! Our primary
	target is dynamic web applications, so users naturally compare it to React and
	other frontend frameworks. I’ll claim no framework is <b>even close</b> to feature
	parity. Let me explain the key differences.
	</p>

	<div id="outline-container-orgf94278e" class="outline-2">
	<h2 id="orgf94278e"><span class="section-number-2">1.</span> Reactive language</h2>
	<div class="outline-text-2" id="text-1">
	<p>
	React, Solid and others provide a reactive framework. We see signals and similar
	abstractions pop up and an API around them. Electric Clojure is a reactive
	<i>language</i>. It looks and feels like Clojure but it is a new language. <code>if</code> is a
	reactive if, <code>try</code> is a reactive try. This means everything is a signal! The
	simplicity this brings to the user is a big thing. You don’t have to mix
	Javascript code, JSX code, framework code - it’s one thing! Less is more.
	</p>
	</div>
	</div>

	<div id="outline-container-org01528b0" class="outline-2">
	<h2 id="org01528b0"><span class="section-number-2">2.</span> Multi-peer language</h2>
	<div class="outline-text-2" id="text-2">
	<p>
	I don’t think anyone understands this fully yet. Electric Clojure compiles a
	single program and distributes it across 2 peers. It takes your client/server
	code, splits it in half and <i>derives</i> all the network communication. What people
	think of here is request/response and RPC, because that’s what they know. But
	Electric Clojure compiles down to a graph and runs everything concurrently.
	Let’s disect a toy example:
	</p>

	<div class="org-src-container">
	<pre class="src src-clojure"><span style="color: #51afef;">(</span><span style="color: #ECBE7B;">e</span>/client
	<span style="color: #c678dd;">(</span><span style="color: #51afef;">let</span> <span style="color: #98be65;">[</span>saying <span style="color: #a9a1e1;">(</span>get-saying-from-user<span style="color: #a9a1e1;">)</span><span style="color: #98be65;">]</span>
	<span style="color: #98be65;">(</span><span style="color: #ECBE7B;">e</span>/server <span style="color: #a9a1e1;">(</span><span style="color: #51afef;">let</span> <span style="color: #51afef;">[</span>id <span style="color: #c678dd;">(</span>gen-next-db-id<span style="color: #c678dd;">)</span><span style="color: #51afef;">]</span>
	<span style="color: #51afef;">(</span>transact-saying! id saying<span style="color: #51afef;">)</span><span style="color: #a9a1e1;">)</span><span style="color: #98be65;">)</span><span style="color: #c678dd;">)</span><span style="color: #51afef;">)</span>
	</pre>
	</div>

	<p>
	<code>get-saying-from-user</code> is a user input on the client side. <code>gen-next-db-id</code> is a
	database request for a new ID on the server side. There is no dependency between
	these 2 calls. That means they will run concurrently! <code>transact-saying!</code> will
	wait for both to finish.
	</p>

	<p>
	Think about a way to achieve the same behavior in Javascript. The best I can
	think of is
	</p>

	<div class="org-src-container">
	<pre class="src src-javascript"><span style="color: #51afef;">const</span> [<span style="color: #dcaeea;">saying</span>, <span style="color: #dcaeea;">id</span>] = <span style="color: #51afef;">await</span> Promise.all([getSayingFromUser(), genNextDbId()]);
	<span style="color: #51afef;">await</span> transactSaying(id, saying);
	</pre>
	</div>

	<p>
	which is operationally not the same thing:
	</p>

	<ul class="org-ul">
	<li>the <code>id</code> roundtrips for no reason</li>
	<li>if a promise fails the second one stays running even though we don’t care
	anymore</li>
	</ul>

	<p>
	It’s even worse from the coding perspective. To implement the above you have to:
	</p>

	<ul class="org-ul">
	<li>create a <code>genNextDbID</code> on the frontend. This will have to issue an e.g. HTTP
	or websocket request</li>
	<li>now you need to open the backend code and add a request handler</li>
	</ul>

	<p>
	This will result in a lot of boilerplate, just to orchestrate the network
	roundtrip we didn’t even care about! The ID could have stayed on the backend. “I
	know how to fix that!”, you shout.
	</p>

	<div class="org-src-container">
	<pre class="src src-javascript"><span style="color: #51afef;">const</span> <span style="color: #dcaeea;">requestId</span> = <span style="color: #51afef;">new</span> <span style="color: #ECBE7B;">RequestId</span>();
	genNextDbId(requestId);
	<span style="color: #51afef;">const</span> <span style="color: #dcaeea;">saying</span> = <span style="color: #51afef;">await</span> getSayingFromUser();
	<span style="color: #51afef;">await</span> transactSaying(saying, requestId);
	</pre>
	</div>

	<p>
	Now the server can tuck the ID away under the <code>requestId</code> key and reconcile the
	data. However this just creates more trouble:
	</p>

	<ul class="org-ul">
	<li><code>genNextDbId</code> is now fire and forget. What if it fails?</li>
	<li>what if <code>getSayingFromUser</code> fails? How long will the server keep the generated
	id around?</li>
	<li>how much more orchestration code did we have to write on both peers?</li>
	</ul>

	<p>
	I hope you start to see a pattern here. Any code you come up will involve
	writing a lot of boilerplate code and thinking of tons of edge cases.
	</p>

	<p>
	Now look at the Electric Clojure implementation again. It’s dead-simple code to
	write and <b>none</b> of these concerns exist! This is why we compare it to garbage
	collection - managed memory solves a lot of memory orchestration for you in a
	safe way and allows new patterns that weren’t possible with manual memory
	management. The same applies here for the network - you don’t write manual
	network orchestration code and get optimal concurrency as a bonus.
	</p>
	</div>
	</div>

	<div id="outline-container-org0a76740" class="outline-2">
	<h2 id="org0a76740"><span class="section-number-2">3.</span> Conclusion</h2>
	<div class="outline-text-2" id="text-3">
	<p>
	Electric Clojure is a big deal, even if you are not a Clojure(script)
	programmer. Of course, this is just the beginning! There’s more exciting work
	underway, so stay tuned!
	</p>
	</div>
	</div>
	</body>
	</html>