# Rich-Hickey-fanclub: one file and two folders

> A fan-made index of a Clojure creator's talks, interviews, and profiles, spanning sixteen years and hosted entirely in a readme. Its value is as a finding aid, and its rough edges are the duplicates and the dead links a hand-maintained list accumulates.

**tallesl/Rich-Hickey-fanclub** — GitHub describes it as "every time I watch one of his talks I feel like someone has gone in and organized my brain". The repository metadata lists HTML as its primary language. This article stays within the project description and details documented in the GitHub repository README.

- Repository: https://github.com/tallesl/Rich-Hickey-fanclub
- Stars: 3,168 · Forks: 99
- Language: HTML
- License: not declared
- Published: 2026-08-13 · Updated: 2026-08-18 · Language: en
- Canonical page: https://hysenlabs.com/projects/tallesl-rich-hickey-fanclub

## The repository is one file and two folders

The whole project is three paths: a readme, a directory called cartoon, and a directory called lisps. There is no package manifest, no build, no tests, and no release history, and the primary language recorded for the repository is HTML, which reflects that the readme is a formatted page rather than a program. The header even points its image link at a bare anchor, so the banner that would normally sit at the top renders as nothing. What the readme is instead is an index: a description line calling it a collection about Rich Hickey's works on the internet, followed by sections of links grouped by what they are. The lisps folder earns its place in the structure, because the readme's own note points to it for material that predates the better-known work. The cartoon folder is not explained anywhere in the text.

## Three projects, plus the Lisps that came before

The Work section is four lines long. Three of them name projects: Clojure, with a link to its organisation, Datomic, with a link to its own organisation page, and Harmonikit, linked to a repository under his own account. The fourth line is a sentence rather than a link, and it points at the lisps folder for other, less well known Lisps from before Clojure. That is the only structural hint in the repository about what is inside that folder, and it is worth following if the history of the material interests you more than the current tools. The section as written also draws a distinction the rest of the file depends on: the three named projects are what the talks and interviews are about, while everything earlier is filed away as background.

## Fifty talks, and about a dozen delivered twice

The Talks section runs from a 2007 conference appearance to a 2023 design talk, and each entry carries its own date in the title. What makes the list useful is also what makes it untidy: several talks appear two or three times because the same material was delivered at different events on different dates. Simple Made Easy is listed once in September 2011 and again in March 2012. Deconstructing the Database appears in both July and November 2012. Reducers is listed as a May 2012 talk and again as a June 2012 talk with a longer title. The value of values appears both as a keynote and as a standalone talk. Clojure Concurrency has two March 2008 entries, and the introductory lectures are split into parts one and two for both Java and Lisp programmers. Two other details are worth knowing: some links go through a web archive because the original page has moved, and one set of slides for a talk titled Clojure: What just happened is hosted on an unrelated university page.

## Transcripts live in somebody else's repository

If you want text rather than video, the readme sends you elsewhere. It states that transcripts of some of the talks can be found in a transcript collection maintained in another person's repository, with a path pointing at a directory named for the speaker. That is the only transcript pointer in the file, and the qualifier matters, since it says some of the talks rather than all of them. Two other items sit in the same paragraph as the talk list. One is the university-hosted slide deck for the talk whose name ends in a question mark, and the other is nothing at all, which is to say the readme does not attempt to prioritise within its own list. Reading it top to bottom in date order is the intended use.

## Interviews are spread across four hosts

The Interviews section is shorter than the talks list but points at more kinds of outlet. Two entries are podcast episodes of a show about problem solving, one from May 2018 covering a specific Clojure release. Four are episodes of Cognicast, the podcast of a consulting company that employed him, including one on a specification library and one on asynchronous programming. Several are InfoQ interviews, covering a database and its transaction guarantees, a datastore, an event sourcing product, and the wider subjects of storage, functional programming, and immutability. Then there is a conference channel talk recorded as an expert-to-expert discussion with another well known figure, a conference appearance in 2012, and a technology conference talk in the same year. The spread is a fair proxy for how the work was received across a decade.

## One profile link carries an asterisk, and one is an archive

The On the internet section is the part most likely to rot, and the readme is honest about it. Most entries are stable: a code hosting account, a gist page, a social profile, a professional network entry, a language mailing list search, a news aggregator profile, a forum profile, and a programming archive. Two are not. The forum comments entry is marked with an asterisk, and a footnote explains why: some comments are not shown on that user page, with a link to an archived example of a missing comment. The retail link is worse, since it points at a web archive snapshot of a wish list page rather than at anything that still exists. The section also includes a source archive profile from the era before the current code hosting platform, which is a reminder of how long the career in the list runs.

## No licence, no releases, and a last push in February 2025

Two administrative facts matter if you want to reuse any of it. The licence field for the repository records no identifier, and there is no licence file in the tree, so the default position on copyright applies to both the prose and the links. And there are no GitHub releases, which is expected for something that is not software. The last push to the master branch is dated 2025-02-09, and the newest item in the talks list is from April 2023, so the gap between the newest thing collected and the last edit is under two years. Treat that as the maintenance signal it is: a personal index updated when the author remembered, not a watched archive. Nothing here needs building, so there is also nothing to break when a link breaks.

## Conclusion

This repository is worth bookmarking as a starting point rather than as a source to cite, because it is a personal index maintained outside any review process. Two things to expect. Expect duplicate entries, since the same talk is listed once per delivery with a different date each time, and expect some links to lead through an archive because the original page moved. For anything you intend to quote, follow the link to the original recording or transcript rather than the index.

## FAQ

### Who created Clojure?

This repository does not answer that directly. It is a collection about the work of Rich Hickey, listing Clojure, Datomic, and Harmonikit as his projects, and noting that he also made other, less well known Lisps prior to Clojure.

### Where can I find Rich Hickey's talks?

The Talks section lists entries from 2007 to April 2023 with dates in each title, hosted across conference sites, YouTube, Vimeo, and InfoQ. Several talks appear more than once because the same material was delivered at different events, and some links point at archived copies of pages that have moved.

### Are there transcripts of the talks anywhere?

The readme says transcripts of some of the talks can be found in a transcript collection maintained in another person's repository, with a path for the speaker. It also links a set of slides for a talk titled Clojure: What just happened.

### What is actually inside the Rich-Hickey-fanclub repository?

A readme, a cartoon directory, and a lisps directory covering the less known Lisps before Clojure. There is no code, no build, and no licence file, and the repository publishes no releases.

## Sources

- [Official README](https://github.com/tallesl/Rich-Hickey-fanclub#readme)
- [Project repository](https://github.com/tallesl/Rich-Hickey-fanclub)
- [README](https://github.com/tallesl/Rich-Hickey-fanclub/blob/master/README.md)
- [Releases](https://github.com/tallesl/Rich-Hickey-fanclub/releases)

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Hysen Labs editorial analysis, written from the project's own repository and release notes. Cite the canonical page: https://hysenlabs.com/projects/tallesl-rich-hickey-fanclub