Writing less code (by understanding your priorities) - Wildflower

Wildflower explains how to write less code and manage complexity by defining clear priorities and evaluating trade-offs in ClojureScript.

You can write less code, thereby using less resources and having a smaller surface to secure by having clear priorities. You can define your priorities by understanding: 1. What problem you're going to solve 2. Where is the necessary complexity 3. How to evaluate and compensate for tradeoffs To illustrate this process, I'm going to compare the development of Giant Heart Poetry (giantheart.co which I previously introduced in this talk youtu.be/Uy34ZC7r-3Q) to the development of Paperbalm (paperbalm.com) which was a substantial rewrite. The entire story takes place over 4 years of Clojurescript development, and I plan on showing how prioritization works in both the small, and the large. The modular nature of Clojure web development is often seen as a limitation to new programmers, but I can show that the modularity allows you to prioritize better. For example, if you can clearly define your navigation needs, you might not need to import and integrate and entire routing library like Reitit and can instead write a few functions within the structure of your existing codebase. Biography Ada is a Trinidadian web developer from Richmond VA. She has been programming in Clojure for over a decade and loves climbing and writing poetry. Most recently she started the Paperbalm Writer's Club which is based around a text editor that she created with Clojurescript @ paperbalm.com Recorded Nov 13, 2025 at Clojure/Conj 2025 in Charlotte, NC.