Clojure Entity Component System: A Functional Approach to Game Development
The article introduces the Clojure Entity Component System (ECS), a software architectural pattern commonly used in video game development. Unlike traditional inheritance-based approaches, ECS follows the principle of composition over inheritance, where entities are defined by the components associated with them. This allows for greater flexibility and modularity in game development. The article highlights the use of plain atoms, maps, and keywords in the Clojure ECS, making it a functional and side-effect-free solution. The author also mentions future work, such as incorporating transients in the reduce functions and exploring the use of Datomic for more efficient component querying. Overall, the Clojure ECS offers developers a clean and functional approach to game development, separating functions with side effects from purely functional ones.