Appendix. Conclusion

What you’ve seen in this book is only the tip of the iceberg. Lisp, and thus Clojure, makes it possible to build systems that can withstand today’s demanding requirements. It isn’t far-fetched to think that the revival of Lisp will prompt systems that can someday do what you mean. To do that, you’ll need more than a few language features or a macro system. You’ll need more than DSLs.

You’ll need a system that can adapt itself to new and changing requirements. Programmers will need to recognize that evaluators are themselves programs, and they can be built like everything else, allowing new kinds of evaluation rules and paradigms. You’ll need programs that watch themselves as they run and modify themselves to improve their output. All this might seem like fantasy, but it’s possible. In the words of Alan Kay, the computer revolution hasn’t even started yet.^[1] And paraphrasing him some more, the way to build systems that can do all this is to play it grand. You have to build your systems grander than you think they can be. A language like Clojure gives you the tools to make this happen.

¹

The Computer Revolution Hasn’t Happened Yet, 1997 OOPSLA Keynote: https://youtu.be/oKg1hTOQXoY.