The Data-Reader's Guide to the Galaxy
Presented at Clojure/West 2013
Don’t panic if you’re unsure about picking up data-readers. It turns out that tagged literals are mostly harmless. Much as Douglas Adams produced “The Hitchhicker’s Guide” material in multiple forms, a Clojure programmer can assign data-readers to process tagged literals with customized implementations. Clojure 1.5 adds a new feature that makes dealing with unknown tags simple and convenient. We’ll also talk about the Extensible Data Notation (EDN), which aims to be the Babel fish of data transfer. Finally, we will explore a few unorthodox uses for data-readers.