Advent of code 2020

Christoph Frick - ofnir.net — Sun, 27 Dec 2020 23:00:00 GMT

This year I am doing my first Advent of code ever using in Clojure. Advent of code gives daily code challenges, consisting of two parts building on each other.

I used this to try out vim-iced to replace vim-fireplace and tried out Kaocha.

Iced

Pros:

Starts its own REPL, so no need to fiddle with cider plugins etc.
Good integration into NeoVim.
Code evaluation is shown inline
Macro-expand into buffer

Cons:

The CLI tool needs a local installation of node to run shadow-cljs.
Code navigation only works when reloading a name-space.
Multiple crashes of NeoVim over the course of the month.

Kaocha

I replaced lein-test-refresh with Kaocha as my watching test runner. I really like the workflow of having my test run automatically every time I save a file.

Pros:

Ability to focus tests with meta annotations.
Colored, pretty printed output on test failure.
Seamless integration with clojure.test and Leiningen.
Many plugins and helpers (e.g. notify on test failure/success with a configured tool).

Cons:

Found no way to stop an long running test other than Ctrl-C.
The diffed output can be so overwhelming, I re-run tests sometimes with lein test just to get the plain data.
Output is captured and only prints once the test is finished; so "debug-println" is delayed and might never print in case of infinite loops.

Conclusion

While I am not convinced that I will stick with Iced, I really liked Kaocha.

The code is on GitHub

Christoph Frick - ofnir.net - Open Source Consultant, Software Developer and System Administrator (Posts about Advent of code)

Advent of code 2020

Iced

Kaocha

Conclusion