Out of the Shadows

Hello, A Newsletter by Arne Brasseur Sep 22

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Hello,

In a few days’ time a hundred of you have signed up for this newsletter. Thank you for your trust and support!

I’ve been doing open source and community organising for close to two decades. In the coming year I want to double down on that, see where that takes me. It’s work that often happens in the shadows, that can feel very isolating. With this newsletter I hope to create some more visibility into what I do, and to connect sincerely and authentically with all of you out there. It will (I can’t believe I have to say this) always be hand written. A piece of flotsam to hold onto while we all drown in a sea of slop.

It’s been a busy week. I wrapped up my last consulting engagement last week, and this weekend we’re leaving for the mountains, for a well deserved break. In between I had a week to deal with Gaiwan wind-down work, Clojure/conj Compass work, HeartConf stuff, setting up this newsletter, and prepping for the trip. But I really wanted to get this first folio out to you all before we leave. Enjoy!

Public Service Announcement

The State of Devs 2026 survey is out. It covers career, workplace, health, and even worldview issues that are often left unaddressed in the developer community. It’d be great if we get broad representation on this, so go fill it out!

Open Source

In less than two months the Clojure/conj 2026 is taking place, in North Carolina and online. For this edition they have decided to use the Compass app we developed for Heart of Clojure. A single place where attendees can find the schedule, sign up for sessions, or add their own fringe activities.

Nubank is funding the addition of a live stream feature, so you’ll be able to see the talks in the same place.

So I’ve been back in the Compass code base. Not much has happened there since 2024, but it holds up. It’s nice to see how some of the things we did in that codebase became separate libraries, Wagontrain for Datomic migrations, and lambdaisland/config for configuration management. Those have continued to improve and it’s nice to plug them in now and delete a bunch of code from Compass.

One of the recent additions to lambdaisland/config is support for systemd-creds. If you’re deploying Clojure services with systemd then this is an elegant way to store credentials securely on the server.

HeartConf

After a successful Heart of Clojure in 2019 and 2024, I’m doing another conference next year. I guess my memory is getting worse, it only took two years this time to forget how much work it is.

No longer Heart of Clojure this time, but HeartConf. What’s up with that? I already had one person in my inbox asking if I was "abandoning" Clojure??

The thing is that Heart of Clojure was never just a conference about Clojure. Have a look at the videos from 2024 or from 2019. Half of the talks feature no Clojure at all, and many others are not strictly about Clojure, they’re people doing cool stuff with technology who happen to do so in Clojure.

What made it Heart of Clojure is that it’s a conference for the kind of people who are into Clojure. People who are curious, critical, open to using a niche language if they see the merit. People who appreciate elegance and good design. People who know that a paper from the 1970s might have more answers for them than last week’s new framework.

Those people, that community of practice, will feel right at home at HeartConf. You can expect a curated programme with a wide range of topics, technical and non-technical. Clojure will still feature prominently, but I also want to involve people from adjacent communities. Since StrangeLoop ended there has been a dearth of spaces for wayward technologists. I hope HeartConf can slake their thirst and satiate their hunger.

A conference is first and foremost about the people. As in previous years there will be lots of opportunity to hang out, to connect. We’ll have, as in previous years, a variety of fringe activities. With gestures at the state of the industry it’s more important than ever to meet in person, to be in the same room and share our experiences.

It’s still early days, but we have a really cool new venue, with lots of room to create a special event.

Bookmarks

Picks from my Mastodon bookmarks

• We didn’t choose AI, Capital did. About the fiction of efficient markets. (My comment about it which got a bunch of shares)
• Dark Hours Love to see indy devs putting out good stuff, this will be a life-saver for all the stargazers.
• The Psychology of Software teams (Book) It’s out! I’m only a few chapters in but it’s already resonating like a carillon. I expect to have more to say about this once I finish it.
• Don’t take the Black Pill (Video) I’ve been really enjoying the videos from the Software Should Work conference. This is an important one.