Rich Hickey

{{Short description|Computer programmer and creator of Clojure}}

{{Use mdy dates|date=April 2021}}

File:Rich Hickey.jpg ]]

Rich Hickey is a computer programmer and speaker, known as the creator of the Clojure programming language. Clojure is a Lisp dialect built on top of the Java Virtual Machine.{{Cite web|date=March 2, 2010|title=Rich Hickey: Geek of the Week|url=https://www.red-gate.com/simple-talk/opinion/geek-of-the-week/rich-hickey-geek-of-the-week/|access-date=June 5, 2020|website=Simple Talk|language=en-US|author=Morris, Richard}}{{Cite web|title=Economy Size Geek - Interview with Rich Hickey, Creator of Clojure {{!}} Linux Journal|url=https://www.linuxjournal.com/article/10708|access-date=June 5, 2020|date=April 1, 2010|author=Elmendorf, Dirk|website=www.linuxjournal.com}} He also created or designed ClojureScript and the Extensible Data Notation (EDN) data format.

Before Clojure, he developed dotLisp, a similar project based on the .NET Framework.{{Cite web|url=http://www.gigamonkeys.com/code-quarterly/2011/rich-hickey/|title=Rich Hickey Q&A|website=Code Quarterly: The Hackademic Journal|author=Michael Fogus|year=2011}} Hickey has also worked on scheduling systems, broadcast automation, audio analysis and fingerprinting, database design, yield management, exit poll systems, and machine listening.{{Cite web|date=November 20, 2008|title=Presentation about Clojure|url=https://www.infoq.com/presentations/hickey-clojure/|archive-url=|archive-date=|access-date=June 5, 2020|website=InfoQ|publisher=JVM Language Summit|language=en|author=Hickey, Rich}}

He spent about 2½ years working on Clojure, much of that time working exclusively on Clojure without external funding, before releasing it to the world in 2007. In 2012, Datomic, a proprietary distributed database was launched which coincided with the incorporation of Cognitect. From 2013 until 2020, he was the chief technology officer of Cognitect.{{cite web|url=https://www.cognitect.com/blog/2013/09/16/relevance-and-metadata-partners-join-forces-to-become-cognitect|title=Relevance and Metadata Partners Join Forces to Become Cognitect|author=Gehtland, Justin|date=September 16, 2013}} Cognitect was acquired by Nubank in 2020, and he was a Distinguished Engineer at Nubank until August 2023 when he announced{{Cite web |date=2023-08-04 |title=Clojure - (next Rich) |url=https://clojure.org/news/2023/08/04/next-rich |access-date=2023-08-04 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230804142942/https://clojure.org/news/2023/08/04/next-rich |archive-date=August 4, 2023 }} his retirement from commercial software development.