The poet T.S. Eliot believed in the “objective correlative”: the use of a sequence of symbols to evoke an emotion in the reader. Since programs are also sequences of symbols, we can think of poems as emotive programs! In this talk, we’ll use Eliot’s understanding of the objective correlative as a lens to explore the intersection of Clojure and poetry. In the process, we’ll write poems that are executable programs and write Clojure programs that generate poems. You’ll come away with a better understanding of the flexibility and grace of Clojure as a language, as well as a newfound appreciation for modern poetry.
Eric Weinstein
Hulu
Eric Weinstein is a poet, an engineering manager at Hulu, and a masters student at Georgia Tech, where he studies machine learning. His poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Ploughshares, The Yale Review, and others; his software is mostly on GitHub. He enjoys writing Clojure, Elixir, Idris, Ruby, and Swift.