Learning ClojureScript and Om

I missed a few weeks (months?) of writing about my learning sprints, because I’ve been way out of the routine that let me do independent work. At the end of April, I went to RailsConf in Chicago and had tons to process from everything I learned there. At the beginning of May, the company I worked for, Manilla, closed down and I had to find a new job. That took a month, and I started my new job at the Climate Corporation a few weeks ago. I’ve been getting up to speed and learning the code, systems, teams, products, etc there. But now things are settled and I’m back in the saddle.

This sprint I’m going to work on ClojureScript, particularly Om, the view state library built on Facebook’s React. I’ve looked at a lot of Javascript frameworks and libraries, and most of them seem … wrong. Not bad, but each of them bugs me in its own way. React has a very solid conceptual basis and great implementation, and Om builds on that. Add the benefits of ClojureScript over vanialla Javascript and it seems like a great platform to learn.

I’m going to start by working through David Nolen’s Om tutorials:

I have a project in mind if I have time (or maybe next sprint). I swim for exercise, and swim workouts tend to be a lot of: “Swim X yards, Y times, on a time interval of Z”. I’ve looked for an app that lets you setup and run the timer for those workouts, but this is one of the only times I haven’t found a single app that does what I’m looking for. While I don’t want to bring my iPhone to the pool, it seems like a tractable problem for a week or two:

Parse a string like “4×100@3:00” and add those sets to the workout
Start a workout and count down each of the intervals
Bonus: button to indicate when you finish each distance. The timer will continue, but this will let you know if you’re taking 2:30 of 3:00 and getting a short rest, or 1:30 of 3:00 and you should reduce your interval time.

I’ll post my notes, results, and progress in a week or two.

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