Electric Clojure: Differential Dataflow for UI

Electric Clojure is a new way to build rich, interactive web applications on the JVM. It leverages Clojure's unique capabilities to offer a properly composable solution to frontend/backend state management—an area that, over the last decade, has overtaken ORMs as the “Vietnam of computer science.”

Electric uses a compiler (via macros) to infer the frontend/backend boundary from unified code—placing frontend and backend logic in the same expression!—and automatically generates the full-stack app.

This means frontend development can finally move beyond the incredible complexity of frontend/backend sync machinery, so that us developers can build more sophisticated, interactive applications than ever before.

This talk will introduce Electric, dive into its elegantly simple DAG-based composition model, and show how it enables seamless interweaving of frontend and backend processes into a choreographed, high-performance dance—all without sacrificing Clojure’s straightforward, functional-lite composition model that anybody can understand.

Topic list:

• Frontend/Backend State Management, the New Vietnam of Computer Science
• Process Supervision (yes like Erlang), but for Web Applications
• Signals vs Streams, and why it matters
• Functional effect systems, and what they get you
• The resurgence of Functional Reactive Programming
• Differential Dataflow, and why it matters in web development
• What is Functional Programming even for, actually? What does it let you do that you couldn't do before?

Dustin Getz is the creator of Electric Clojure and founder of Hyperfiddle, a rapid UI development tool for building high-fidelity enterprise workbench frontends for your Java backends in minutes not months. Follow him at twitter.com/dustingetz.
‍
About the venue: Certara accelerates medicines to patients, using biosimulation (modeling and simulation) and technology-enabled services to transform drug discovery and development. Our integrated and proprietary end-to-end platform with generative AI technology, biosimulation, regulatory science, and market access solutions combined with our global 1,400+ strong team of scientists and experts enable informed decision-making, higher R&D productivity, and improved patient outcomes.