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Rich Hickey rants about HttpServletRequest in 1080p: Death By Specificity from Clojure Made Simple

Fred Overflow · talk · Watch on YouTube

Software architecture & designFunctional programmingDatabases & storage

What it is

A five-minute excerpt of Rich Hickey's Clojure Made Simple talk, with new slides, ranting about HttpServletRequest and specificity. He argues for using generic maps instead of many specific classes and getters.

Why Hacker News recommends it

Cited as the classic rant on maps versus objects in discussions of data modeling and OOP.

  • 5 people recommended it
  • 5 different months
  • 3 strong recommendations
  • first 2020, last 2026

What HN commenters said

  1. “it's golden”

    Hickey rant on maps and Java getters

    TacticalCoder, 2021-03 · Strong recommendation · in “Clojure from a Schemer's Perspective”

  2. “Watch anything Rich Hickey talks about. He really "gets it".”

    Shows how Hickey thinks in lisp and uses maps

    daly, 2021-04 · Strong recommendation · in “Languages you must know #10 (Lisp)”

  3. “A classic rant by Rich Hickey”

    Classic Hickey rant on maps versus objects

    travisjungroth, 2023-11 · Strong recommendation

  4. “which is a good illustration of why data is better than functions, a key driver of Clojure's design.”

    Excerpt illustrating why data beats functions in Clojure design

    filoeleven, 2025-04 · Recommendation · in “Why I Program in Lisp”

  5. “This is with your time”

    Argues for maps and data-transforming functions over OOP

    drob518, 2026-06 · Recommendation · in “My thoughts after using Clojure for about a month”

Excerpts from Hacker News comments, linked to the originals. Summaries and labels were written by a language model from those comments.

Topics: rich hickey, clojure, maps, oop, data modeling

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