DUdustingetz·Dec 2, 2024
In Category Theory in Programminghyperfiddle
electric
Clojure2023–2026
hyperfiddle / electric
electric
Electric Clojure: full-stack differential dataflow for UI
14Distinct people
24Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
2.1KGitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
Electric Clojure: full-stack differential dataflow for UI
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use was verified in the last source check.
What people are saying
No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.
No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.
Also in these discussions
- leonoel/missionary · linked in 3 of the same discussions
Mentioned in the same Hacker News threads. That is not proof they are substitutes.
This week on Hacker News
Nov 8–Nov 15 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/15/2026, 7:02:26 AM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by year24 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2023-02-13 09:49:19 UTC to 2026-08-07 17:51:25 UTC.
* An incomplete calendar period is marked with an outlined bar. Its count is not directly comparable with a full period.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 13 | 1 | 12 |
| 2024 | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 7 | 0 | 7 |
| 2025 | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| 2026 (partial) | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
What Hacker News says
7 sourcesI didn't fully understand this idea of hydration but I also got recently interested in leveraging Wasm, in context of running parts of backend logic using it (eg. regular templating and some Htmx endpoints) to allow certain offline features with regular server-side web frameworks that could use similar Sqlite Wasm datastore as OP.
- Full Django example https://github.com/m-butterfield/django_webassembly
- Minimal Rust example with client-server separation using macros https://github.com/richardanaya/wasm-service
- Clojure Electric using more macros for something similar (without wasm) https://github.com/hyperfiddle/electric
- Recent M$ web tooling starting with letter B?
In last few years, surprisingly many parts of Python ecosystem to have gained Wasm support that can leverage this also. Obvious ML related ones and even game libraries li
Read the rest
ke Pygame and Pyxels. Kivy support (multi-touch UI library) should not be too far out either now that SDL2 library has added support.
Seems like there's many new possibilities for running code in any computer, optionally sandboxed in web browser to avoid platform bureaucracy or taxes.
If you enjoy FRP-related stuff, Missionary[0] (in Clojure) is doing some really great work.
Most people discover it through Electric Clojure.[1]
The Missionary author has some really good talks he's done up on YouTube about it.
[0] https://github.com/leonoel/missionary
[1] https://github.com/hyperfiddle/electric
In Reactive Relational Algebra> simple examples comparing Lisp ... that illustrate the benefits of using Lisp over another language
It depends on what you're trying to get out of it. For example, you can grab a simple code of some React components with JSX and ask ChatGPT to write it in Hiccup (Clojure). That would show you how s-expressions can reduce the syntax boilerplate and make it smaller. You can do the same thing with Lua and Fennel - Fennel code would be much shorter and cleaner.
However, without proper understanding and using structural editing and connected REPL, you probably won't see any benefits right away. Lisp code is not the best to be read off the "dead medium" - paper or screen. It's better when you have a connected REPL because it allows you to evaluate every single expression on the fly. Instead of trying to understand what (foo x y z) means, you
Read the rest
can evaluate it and immediately see the results. With a connected REPL, you can evaluate them separately (individually), or together. Good talk of relevance: "Stop Writing Dead Programs by Jack Rusher" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ab3ArE8W3s
Next step in understanding the benefits of Lisp code is learning structural editing. Because everything is a symbolic expression, you can easily move, transpose, change, and replace parts of your program. Instead of rewriting a function of seemingly arbitrary syntax constructs, you'll be dealing with well-structured forms that you can easily move around. No, it not the same, better or worse than using refactoring features of your IDE with other (non-lispy) languages. It's just different.
These two aspects - REPL and structural editing - are really difficult to explain; one has to experience them in person to see if that way of writing software feels appealing to them. And yet, without grokking the basics of these two essential things, IMO, the Lisp experience will not be the same, and you may not get why some people get really excited about Lisps.
And If you're truly looking for a brain-bender, check out https://github.com/hyperfiddle/electric. Dive into the concepts, play with the example demos, and see where it takes you. But be warned: it's an incredibly dense project and definitely not for the uninitiated. If you haven't written in Clojure before, chances are you won't fall in love with its ideas overnight. But it's a good example of "practical applications" that are difficult to achieve unless you're using a Lisp.
The cleanest way to handle the backend and frontend charade I've seen until now is using https://github.com/hyperfiddle/electric which is a clojure DSL on top of react
In LiveView Is Best with Sveltethis is the problem electric clojure solves: https://github.com/hyperfiddle/electric
In The quiet, pervasive devaluation of front endElectric Clojure uses Clojure itself (s-expressions) as a graph authoring syntax, using a macro to reify dataflow through a reactive client/server system (here the use case is full stack user interfaces but the idea generalizes) https://github.com/hyperfiddle/electric (I'm the founder).
IMO, the answer to the question "Where are all the graph types?" is: the graph authoring DSL needs to express scope, control flow and abstraction, which essentially makes it isomorphic to a programming language, freed of its evaluation model. In Python and Typescript, embedding a complete programming language is something that's rather hard to do!
Also see my blog post "Four problems preventing visual flowchart programming from expressing web applications" https://www.dustingetz.com/#/page/four%20problems%20preventi...
In The hunt for the missing data type