Rich Hickey is an American programmer best known as the creator of Clojure. His emphasis on simplicity, immutability, and functional programming has influenced programmers far beyond the Clojure community.
Creating Clojure
Hickey spent about two years developing Clojure before its 2007 release, working without income to pursue his vision. He wanted a practical Lisp that could leverage the JVM while embracing functional programming and immutability.
Philosophy
Hickey’s talks articulate a distinctive philosophy:
- “Simple Made Easy”: Simplicity (few concepts) differs from easiness (familiarity)
- “The Value of Values”: Immutable values are safer than mutable objects
- “Hammock-Driven Development”: Deep thinking matters more than typing
Datomic
Hickey created Datomic, a database that applies Clojure’s principles to data storage:
- Immutable database—facts are added, never modified
- Time travel—query the database as of any point in time
- Datalog query language
Influence Beyond Clojure
Hickey’s ideas spread beyond his language:
- His talks are widely viewed and quoted
- Persistent data structures influenced other languages
- The simple/easy distinction became common vocabulary
- Functional programming gained mainstream credibility