Q3 2020 Survey Results

Thanks so much for your support and feedback in the latest survey. This quarter we are funding four projects $9,000 each. You can apply for funding, applications are open until 11th November 11:59pm PST.

Survey Responses

There were 60 respondents to our Q3 2020 survey. The highlights are presented below.

What areas of Clojure would you like to see improvement in?

The main things our members were interested in:

• Developer Experience Tools
• Error Messages
• IDE support
• Data Analysis/Processing Frameworks
• Documentation
• Linters
• Debuggers
• Build tooling
• Test tooling

If you work on any of these kinds of projects, please look at applying for funding.

Are there any particular libraries, tools, or projects that are important to you that you would like to see supported?

• shadow-cljs
• Calva
• cider
• babashka
• Fulcro
• Pathom
• clj-kondo
• datahike
• DataScript
• Malli
• Neanderthal ecosystem
• re-frame
• vim fireplace

If you’re a maintainer of any of these projects, please consider applying.

Have you seen any direct benefits from improvements to the projects we have funded?

A sampling of comments:

• I’ve been happy with the projects that have been funded, it’s a community effort after all.
• Calva certainly seems way better than when I tried it 2 years ago
• Yes. I believe everyone who is a member of Clojurists Together benefits from what you’re doing and that’s why we contribute to the organization.
• Continued reliability on the Clojure ecosystem
• Happy to see support for CIDER, Oz, shadow-cljs, etc. Recent updates to Oz have been very helpful to me.
• I’ve appreciated the recent nrepl, reagent, and clj-kondo work
• I use approximately half the sponsored projects.
• It’s good to know that Bozhidar was supported – he’s doing a lot of work
• Borkdude’s work has really gained focus and the improvements to his libraries are great.

How would you like us to allocate our funding?

For company members:

• 57% wanted us to fund 50% Mature, 50% speculative
• 43% wanted us to fund 75% Mature, 25% speculative

For developer members:

• 65% wanted us to fund 50% Mature, 50% speculative
• 29% wanted us to fund 75% Mature, 25% speculative
• 4% wanted us to fund 25% Mature, 75% speculative
• 2% wanted us to fund 100% Mature, 0% speculative

What are we doing well, what could we be doing better?

Doing well:

• IDE support and core libraries
• Being transparent and well organized
• The engagement and communication to backers is really well done. Reading the mails keeps me afloat on the ecosystem
• Good choices in projects that are funded. picking a good mix of projects and the right projects to fund
• Establishing a community of support around the Clojure ecosystem, making the language ever more viable for use.

Could do better:

• Outreach, elevator pitching, making the mission even more known in companies
• More insight into how the projects to be funded are chosen.
• Fund specific people (not projects) who have demonstrated innovative thinking / tools. Look for a way to fund quantum improvements in tools.
• Treat mature and mainstream (by democratic choice) projects specially, i.e. allocate steady significant sponsorships

Thank you!