"Babashka: a meta-circular Clojure interpreter for the command line" by Michiel Borkent

Babashka is a Clojure interpreter for cross platform scripting. It is available as a single binary that starts instantly. It makes Clojure a viable replacement for writing bash scripts. Babashka comes with a handful of libraries out of the box (JSON, command line parsing, etc.) and supports loading libraries from the Clojure ecosystem. The interpreter is written in a meta-circular approach, akin to Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs. It is compiled to a single binary using GraalVM native-image which is the reason it starts fast, but also uses less memory than a JVM, Clojure's original runtime. As such, babashka brings together many exciting technologies to broaden the reach of Clojure even more. This talk explores the high level use cases of babashka, its impact on the Clojure community, its history, technical implementation details and the author's approach to open source development. Michiel Borkent Clojure OSS developer @borkdude Michiel Borkent, also known as @borkdude on the web, is an open source software developer who loves Clojure. He is the author of clj-kondo, babashka, SCI, nbb and other tools that you might have heard of. When he is not coding, he likes to go for a walk outdoors or eat vegetables! ---- Recorded Sept 21, 2023 at Strange Loop 2023 in St. Louis, MO. thestrangeloop.com/