The Clojurists Together organisation has decided to sponsor Scicloj community building for Q1 2024, as a project by Daniel Slutsky. The project is taking place in February, March, and April 2024. Here is Daniel’s update for February.

Comments and ideas would help. 🙏

Clojurists Together update - February 2024 - Daniel Slutsky #

February 2024 was the first of three months on the Clojurists Together project titled “Scicloj Community Building and Infrastructure”.

Scicloj is an open-source group developing Clojure tools and libraries for data and science.

As a community organizer at Scicloj, my current role is to help the emerging Scicloj stack become easier and more accessible for broad groups of Clojurians. This is done in collaboration with a few Scicloj members.

In February 2024, this has been about the following projects:

Clay #

Clay is a namespace-as-a-notebook tool for literate programming and data visualization developed in collaboration with Timorthy Prately. It is used for documenting libraries and tutorials as well as an analysis tool for dynamic data exploration.

In February 2024, Clay got five new releases, mostly around the following:

• improved compatibility of various visual elements with Quarto
• improved support for making books
• simplified live-reload experience
• support for Observable visualizations
• additional user-reported bugs and feature requests

Many thanks to generateme for the extensive testing and the numerous issues discovered.

In March 2024, the plan is mostly to continue user support and move from the alpha to the beta stage.

Noj #

Noj is a project that collects a few recommended libraries for data and science in a bundle and adds some convenience layers for using them together.

During February 2024, we had some rethinking of this project’s scope and goals in discussion with Carsten Behring, who got involved in the project and has made some substantial contributions to its documentation.

My goal has been mostly to review Carsten’s work and add some documentation.

For March 2024, the hope is to clarify the project’s goals and reorganize its relationships with other libraries accordingly.

Clojure Data Scrapbook #

The Clojure Data Scrapbook is intended to be a community-driven collection of tutorials around data and science in Clojure.

In February 2024, I added a few tutorials and made some changes to the project structure.

For March 2024, the main goal is to clarify the contribution workflow and encourage contributions.

Dev and study groups #

visual-tools #

In the visual-tools group, we began a new series of study sessions around ggplot2 and the grammar of graphics.

The intention is to implement a similar library in Clojure.

In February 2024, my attention has been around prototyping possible solutions, exploring ggplot and its internals, and creating a group of people who are interested in learning it. A few datavis-minded Clojurians have gathered a group and started thinking together, in meeting and over chat.

In March 2024, we will keep learning together. Hopefully, the ideas will be clarified, and some of the group members will start building something.

real-world-data #

The real-world-data group will be a space for Clojure data and science practitioners to bring their own data projects, share experiences, and evolve common practices.

In February 2024, I restarted the group organization, mostly in one-on-one calls and chats with a few of the people who are planning to join.

In March 2024, we are expecting to have the first meeting.

Your feedback would help #

Scicloj is in transition. On the one hand, quite a few of the core members have been very active recently, developing the emerging stack of libraries. At the same time, new friends are joining, and it seems like soon, more people will enjoy the Clojure for common data and science needs.

If you have any thoughts about the current directions, or if you wish to discuss how the evolving platform may fit your needs, please reach out.