> I'm not sure how you characterize 18F as worse than non-startup private sector jobs
Just seems like there is a mismatch between 18F's (high) cool factor and the compensation structure. These pay rates do not strike me as "contracting" or "consulting" rates. They strike me as more in line with "full time employee" pay rates at ordinary private-sector (non-startup) companies. But the job term is capped like a contract job. I don't see the financial upside to match their statement that https://pages.18f.gov/joining-18f/pay-grades/:
"Due to the high-pressure nature of our work, it makes sense that people will move on after a couple of years."
I am intrigued by 18F itself (the organization). Employees are on the "GS" scale (GS-14 thru GS-16). From the "Joining 18F" site's "Government pay grades explained" https://pages.18f.gov/joining-18f/pay-grades/
"… you cannot work at 18F on your position description for more than four years … We believe that in this industry most people aren't going to stick around for four years and beyond. They will join 18F, do their years of service in the federal government, and then return to the private (or public) sector. Due to the high-pressure nature of our work, it makes sense that people will move on after a couple of years. That helps 18F stay fresh and strong."
What the frack?!? Isn't the whole point of working for the Federal Government to have a job for life? 18F is actually worse than (non-startup) private sector jobs in that your contract says you cannot stay in the job longer than 2 (or 4) years. Fascinating.
Will start a socket REPL at any point in your Clojure program.
Unravel is a terminal-based REPL client you can use to connect to that REPL:
https://github.com/Unrepl/unravel
Alternately, for a smooth interactive development experience, including the ability to set breakpoints on lines, there is Cursive:
https://github.com/cursive-ide/cursive
Cursive is a plugin for IntelliJ. There's a free community edition of IntelliJ that works great.