timbre VS test-runner

There are logging libraries that include syntactically scoped timers, such as mulog (https://github.com/BrunoBonacci/mulog). While a great library, we preferred timbre (https://github.com/taoensso/timbre) and rolled our own logging timer macro that interoperates with it. More convenient to have such niceties in a Lisp of course.

Mentioning μ/log and no mention of timbre (https://github.com/taoensso/timbre), that is an odd omission. Malli is a great mention, but there ought to be a mention of clojure.spec (https://github.com/clojure/spec.alpha) which has much more mindshare.

If you're not familiar with lisps in general, it might be hard to grok the differences between lisp-macros (as used in Clojure) and "normal" macros you see in other languages.

But, if you are familiar already, and just wanna see examples of neat macros that makes the API nicer than what a function could provide, here are a few:

- https://github.com/clojure/core.async/blob/master/examples/w...

- https://github.com/weavejester/compojure

- https://github.com/ptaoussanis/timbre

- https://github.com/krisajenkins/yesql

When clj is invoked, two libraries will be available in our code: timbre logging library which artifacts taken from Maven, and test-runner, taken from GitHub.

No, I don't think they were hyped at any point.

They are used in certain libraries like https://github.com/ptaoussanis/timbre but for things that are simply not possible without macros, for example (timbre/spy (+ 1 1)) will actually print both the expression and the result:

DEBUG [ss.experimental.scratch:1] - (+ 1 1) => 2

Perhaps if the macros are "simple" they can be unpacked relatively easily. I do understand how mentally challenging that can be for somebody who's just starting with Clojure. I've been using Clojure for ~8 years and only just recently became more comfortable with macros after I made a conscious effort in that direction. I'm still far from an "expert" in them.

> I had to Grok Integrant again because I wouldn't understand my project otherwise.

You can use plain functions and `reduce` for system composition if you want. Take a look at how Biff does it: https://biffweb.com/p/thinking-about-system-composition/

DI should be used sparingly for the top-level, stateful pieces of your system. If you can't understand your program without it, is this a problem with Clojure itself or the design of the program?

> And when it comes to best practices around unit testing, it's another one of those things where no one in the community seems to be sharing much about it.

The `clojure.test` API has stayed the same for the last decade and that's what you'll see in most projects. Is the concern about how to run tests? Both of the following libraries work well:

Minimal test runner: https://github.com/cognitect-labs/test-runner

:aliases {:test {:extra-paths ["test"] :extra-deps {io.github.cognitect-labs/test-runner {:git/url "https://github.com/cognitect-labs/test-runner.git" :git/sha "8c3f22363d63715de4087b038d79ae0de36a3263"}} :main-opts ["-m" "cognitect.test-runner"] :exec-fn cognitect.test-runner.api/test}}

Cognitect's test-runner is probably the most commonly used approach with deps.edn and the CLI: https://github.com/cognitect-labs/test-runner