DEV Community: Artem Barmin

It allows a small team to achieve really great goals, Episode 12, with Marcin Maicki, Dentons

Artem Barmin — Mon, 02 Feb 2026 13:10:53 +0000

In episode 12 of "Clojure in product. Would you do it again?", we explore how Clojure thrives inside a global enterprise. Our guest, Marcin Maicki, Global Data Developer & Lead Developer at Dentons, one of the world's largest law firms, shares what it takes to keep a Clojure system secure, maintainable, and resilient in an environment dominated by C#, TypeScript, and corporate-standard tooling.

We discuss the realities of being a "Clojure island": integration challenges, tooling expectations, and the skepticism non-standard stacks often face. Marcin explains why security audits and dependency risks demand more attention than many assume, especially when handling sensitive data. He highlights how vulnerability scanning and external testing shape technical decisions, from retiring outdated libraries to reducing long-term maintenance risk.

We also explore the challenges of leading a small engineering team, such as keeping a 9-year-old codebase simple, resisting unnecessary complexity, sharing knowledge, and onboarding new Clojure developers. When asked if he'd choose Clojure again, Marcin offers a nuanced view: an assured "yes" for the right team and goals, and a measured "it depends" in larger organizations where staffing and standardization dominate.

Listen to our podcast and get more insights about Clojure in product:https://www.freshcodeit.com/podcast/it-allows-a-small-team-to-achieve-really-great-goals

Even in the AI era, Clojure gives the biggest performance boost, with Jeremiah Via, The New York Times

Artem Barmin — Fri, 28 Nov 2025 10:21:44 +0000

In the 11th episode of "Clojure in product. Would you do it again?", Artem Barmin and Vadym Kostiuk speak with Jeremiah Via, Staff Software Engineer at The New York Times. Jeremiah describes how Clojure was introduced and adopted across the search stack at a major media organization, and why JVM interop and practical tooling made it the right choice for their data-processing workloads.

Our conversation walks through concrete topics: Jeremiah’s Clojure origin story, the iterative migration from PHP, Erlang, Python, and Java to JVM/Clojure services, and the search team’s day-to-day work, including how they push vector embeddings into Elasticsearch for AI features and performance.

We also dig into hiring and engineering practices: onboarding newcomers with an emphasis on functional thinking and REPL workflows, hiring for search/domain expertise over prior Clojure experience, maintaining code discipline, and addressing production concerns like memory sizing and performance tuning. As Jeremiah notes, "Now with AI stuff, people can be productive very fast without understanding it, using a cursor and tools like that," and he cautions that it remains to be seen how this will affect the deeper mental model of learning to think in Clojure.

We conclude with Jeremiah's response to a question from our previous guest, Cam Saul from Metabase.

Listen to our podcast and get more insights about Clojure in product: https://www.freshcodeit.com/podcast/clojure-still-gives-the-biggest-performance-boost

Open-source is like all eyes looking at it, with Cam Saul, Metabase

Artem Barmin — Tue, 18 Feb 2025 08:55:13 +0000

🎙️ "If more people knew what we knew about Clojure..."
For our final episode of "Clojure in product. Would you do it again?" we sat down with Cam Saul, Founding Engineer and Chief Architect at Metabase. What started as a one-week port from Python to Clojure evolved into one of open source's most beloved data tools.
When they first chose Clojure, the team worried they wouldn't be able to hire enough developers. Instead, they found themselves attracting engineers who would go out of their way to fix deep bugs in their open-source code – and sometimes even join the team!
Join us for a conversation about scaling an open-source project and maintaining a massive codebase. After a decade of building Metabase, Cam is still convinced Clojure is the right choice.
🎧 Listen to the full episode: https://www.freshcodeit.com/podcast/open-source-like-eyes-looking-at-it

How does a small fintech company compete for top talent?

Artem Barmin — Mon, 10 Feb 2025 18:49:54 +0000

🎙️ "Being an underdog also makes you attractive... when I'm bringing Clojure to the table as a company, I'm getting developers who really burn for something."

When you're building software on a closed platform like Salesforce, what happens when you hit its limits? Join us as Alexander Johannes, Head of Development at JustOn, shares how their team evolved from hitting Salesforce's boundaries to building their own platform in Clojure.

From discussing why sometimes "over-engineering" isn't the real problem to revealing an unexpected business advantage of using Clojure for hiring, Alexander offers refreshingly practical insights from 15 years of growing a product company.

Most intriguingly – he's never hired a senior Clojure developer from outside the company. Find out why that might actually be a good thing.

🎧 Listen to the full episode: https://www.freshcodeit.com/podcast/boundaries-to-do-a-meaningful-work

Clojure in product. Would you do it again?

Artem Barmin — Tue, 04 Feb 2025 09:37:38 +0000

🎙️ "Choose smart, thoughtful, kind humans that you want to think through hard problems with. If they know Clojure, awesome. If they don't, they'll learn it."
When Jereme Corrado joined Mobot as their first engineering hire, he made a bold choice: build a robotics-powered QA platform in Clojure. Eight years and 15 engineers later, he shares candid insights about hiring, technical decisions, and why sometimes the "safe choice" isn't the best choice.

From teaching Clojure to new hires through weekly learning sessions to tackling AI integration – join us for a conversation about building products and teams with a "niche" technology that acts as a powerful filter for finding the right people.

🎧 Listen to the full episode: https://www.freshcodeit.com/podcast/clojurescript-is-a-clojure-killer-app

And until you get to that point, you'd be living in pain, right? - Episode 7, with Nathan Marz, Red Planet Labs

Artem Barmin — Mon, 27 Jan 2025 20:38:09 +0000

🎙️ "Until you get to that point, you should be living in pain... because you don't have that perfect, beautiful abstraction yet."
When Nathan Marz started working on Rama at Red Planet Labs, he didn't plan to create a new programming language. But sometimes pushing boundaries means forging new paths - like building a Twitter-scale clone in just 10,000 lines of code.
Join us as the creator of Apache Storm shares how Red Planet Labs uses Clojure to dramatically reduce the complexity of building scalable backends, and why sometimes the best libraries are the ones that haven't needed updates in years.
🎧 Listen to the full episode: https://www.freshcodeit.com/podcast/you-should-be-living-in-pain-right

I truly discovered the enlightenment with Clojure, Episode 6, with Yehonathan Sharvit, CyCognito

Artem Barmin — Mon, 27 Jan 2025 20:36:00 +0000

🎙️ "For the first 10 years, my life as a programmer was not that enjoyable... and then I discovered enlightenment when I found Clojure."

When your job involves mapping the digital "attack surface" of major enterprises, you need a language you can trust. Join us as Yehonathan Sharvit, author of "Data-Oriented Programming", shares how CyCognito uses Clojure to tackle cybersecurity challenges and why he wrote a book about Clojure principles - for developers who don't use Clojure!

From debugging mysteries to spreading ideas beyond language boundaries, this episode offers a refreshingly honest look at both the joys and challenges of using Clojure in production.

🎧 Listen to the full episode: https://www.freshcodeit.com/podcast/discovered-not-the-light-but-the-enlightenment

The capacity to learn new languages is very important

Artem Barmin — Mon, 13 Jan 2025 21:22:11 +0000

🎧 In the 5th episode of “Clojure in product. Would you do it again?” discover the story of a tech lead's journey from PHP to Clojure.

During the lockdown, Jeffy, Lead Backend Developer at HolidayPirates, turned curiosity into action – rebuilding the API stack serving 10 European countries.

In this must-listen episode:
✈️ Why Clojure for travel platform APIs?
✈️ Learning alongside your team and
✈️ The power of the supportive Clojure community

🚀 And don’t miss the answer to James Trunk's question on managing the state in a growing system.

Listen to the full episode: https://www.freshcodeit.com/podcast/the-capacity-to-learn-new-languages

Is it easy to manage a team of highly qualified engineers?

Artem Barmin — Mon, 06 Jan 2025 18:37:09 +0000

🏦 Have you ever wondered how to scale an engineering team while building a bank?

From embracing immutable data to designing a "molding clay" approach to code, James Trunk, VP of Engineering at Griffin, challenges the norms of building in regulated environments.

💻 Discover how Griffin is shaping banking tech with bold technical decisions and a collaborative engineering culture.
And don’t miss the answer to Marten Sytema's question from the previous episode on creating Clojure jobs!

Listen in: https://www.freshcodeit.com/podcast/is-it-easy-to-manage-a-team

Episode 3: Once you try Clojure, there is no way back

Artem Barmin — Tue, 17 Dec 2024 18:18:38 +0000

🎙️"Who doesn't want a monkey in their logo?"
When Marten Sytema, CTO of Catermonkey, says this during our "Clojure in product. Would you do it again?" conversation, he's not just joking.

Behind it is a story about building a successful SaaS platform that now serves hundreds of companies – and the choices that made it possible.
What leads someone to rebuild their entire product when it's already working? And why do some technical decisions become a one-way street?
Join us for a conversation about building software, growing teams, and making technology choices that stick.

🎧 Listen and watch the full episode: https://www.freshcodeit.com/podcast/once-you-try-clojure-there-is-no-way-back

Clojure in Product podcast, 2nd episode

Artem Barmin — Mon, 09 Dec 2024 21:18:05 +0000

🎙️ What happens when you choose a programming language for its technical merits and because you genuinely enjoy working with it?
In the second episode of "Clojure in product. Would you do it again?", we talked with Adam Tornhill about building CodeScene with Clojure since 2015. He shared his thoughts on AI and Clojure development and explained why they just launched another Clojure product in 2024.

Read more about our conversation here: https://www.freshcodeit.com/podcast/we-choose-the-best-tool-for-the-job

Clojure in Product podcast

Artem Barmin — Wed, 04 Dec 2024 11:35:12 +0000

We've just launched our podcast "Clojure in Product. Would you do it again?". Our first episode features Kalle Korhonen from Quuppa, who shares a journey of introducing Clojure into a primarily Java-based enterprise system.
Our goal is simple: talk to real teams who've taken Clojure into production and learn their unfiltered stories.
Listen now: https://www.freshcodeit.com/podcast/we-are-writing-in-clojure