If anyone is looking to brush up on their Algebra fundamentals, I built an app for that and it's free to use: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/pensend/id1571322730. I had a similar problem where I didn't understand where my fundamental knowledge gaps were so I ended up starting from the beginning (pre-algebra). I hope this is helpful for people!
IMHO Javascript is "unusable" because you can mutate state (among other things). Rich Hickey has a few other arguments against static typing and OO such as names dominating semantics and "types are an anti-pattern for program maintenance and extensibility because they introduce coupling. They’re also parochial." I think he said that in his talk called "Effective Programs":
As much as I liked Clojure when I dabbled for a few months it didn't really fix my dislike for dynamic languages, but I imagine core.typed / spec would fix that for me if I gave it another shot
I loathed dynamic typing mostly because you had to jump around code to understand what the shape of anything was, and it distracted me from the problem I'm trying to solve
In ML influenced languages types actively help me plan a solution, and rarely get in my way
Regarding take-home assignments, if you do decide to incorporate this into your hiring process, I think pulling a page out of Aaron Swartz's "How I Hire Programmers" [1] is a good place to start. Important points being to keep the task small and non-proprietary. If it is legally and financially possible, then also pay the programmer for her/his/they time.
I'm still under the impression that if you gave the same set of companies to every VC in the world and had each of them bet on the winners, that you wouldn't see that much of a difference in portfolio performance from the very worst to the very best VCs. There's no magic formula for choosing companies that firms like KP have--a lot of it is based on their reputation. Plus, the next Facebook is not going to look like Facebook or whatever that maxim was. The better companies tend to go to the VCs with the better reputation and the cycle continues.
I can't speak about lein or maven, but it is in no way a requirement to use emacs as your editor. In fact, there is really interesting work going on in other editors like Atom with proto-repl[1]. For the web, you can spin up a Gorilla REPL[2] which basically gives you a Jupyter notebook but for Clojure.
Personally, I find maven repos and lein to be one of the better dependency/build ecosystem of any language. So I disagree with your premise. But, if you don't like them, there's a lot of alternatives.
For dependency management, there's now an official one, maintained and bundled with Clojure, called `tools.deps`. It supports multiple providers, currently maven repos, git repos and local folders.
For build tasks, appart from Lein, you can use Boot or Gradle. But there's a new trend now to rely on individual Clojure programs as the foundation for build tasks, which are then packaged and distributed through `tools.deps`. You can see their full list here: https://github.com/clojure/tools.deps.alpha/wiki/Tools
In the ClojureScript world, there are less build options, but `shadow-cljs` has emerged as a replacement for Lein, and gained a lot of popularity, because it integrates transparently with npm.
> To be perfectly honest, Clojure's biggest mistake, from my point of view, was to be so heavily JVM-dependent.
With Clojure being a hosted language, there's nothing stopping it from adopting a new platform or expanding to other platforms or languages. It has actually already done this with Clojurescript (run in the browser or Node.js)[1] and Clojure CLR (run on Microsoft's .NET)[2].
Could you speak more on the use of macros and bottom-up programming as well as REPL-driven development at Walmart Labs (if applicable)? Would be interested to know if those lisp-like attributes play as important a role as functional programming and the JVM in general.
The docs for the API, especially for a company whose primary users are software developers, is a core part of the product offering. Just look at the investments that AWS, Twilio, and Stripe make in their docs. This stuff matters.
“Based on the images captured by NASA's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), it was revealed that 1.6 percent of the total land surface of China became heavily forested in a span of only ten years from 2000 to 2010.”
So trees don't change the 0 sum aspect behind cloud seeding: if the rain falls in one place, it can't rain in some other place. The primary reason why plants (read: anything photosynthetic) have a role to play in where it rains is the same principle behind cloud seeding. Plants, when they don't have sufficient nutrients to run photosynthesis and make new plant material, release unused photosynthesis as short chained hydrocarbons, usually ethane and some derivatives. Idea here is that it gives them a place to land the electrons from photosynthesis without tearing themselves apart when nutrients aren't readily available. These short chained hydrocarbons go on to play the same role as the silver compound used by China; they form the 'seeds' for droplet formation.
Neither method does anything to address the fact that there is only so much water in the atmosphere (although that is changing with a changing climate).
(sorry for the shameless plug)