About the Author

I am Francis Avila, a software developer for web-facing software since 2008. Since 2013 I’ve worked primarily in Clojure, ClojureScript and Datomic (on-prem, not cloud). I even co-authored a Clojure book back in 2015.

This site is a vehicle for me to share my technical knowledge and opinions.

Since 2019 I’ve been a backend engineer at Shortcut, which has a very large and long-running Datomic database.

If you want to know more about my career, check my LinkedIn profile.

If you want to contact me, send @favila a direct message on clojurians slack.

About this site’s name

This site’s title references two intellectual virtues from Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics.

Phronesis (φρόνησῐς) is the power to decide how to act in particular situations with respect to the overall goods and goals involved in living well. It is usually translated as “prudence”.

Techne (τέχνη) is the power of knowing contingent causes oriented towards producing a practical effect. It is usually translated as “art” or “craft”, and is the virtue one exercises when practicing engineering or any activity where the goal is making something.

Putting these together, Phronesis in Techne is roughly “prudence in crafting.” This site is where I write about technical matters that involve weighing tradeoffs, or just lessons I have learned from experience.

About this site’s theme

This is based on Simplicity with some modifications.