Would you believe it's jank? - Jeaye Wilkerson (Clojure/Conj 2026)

jank is the cutting-edge native Clojure dialect, built on LLVM, with seamless C++ interop. jank is unlocking rich interop with the native world, competitive performance, and an easy native embedding story. In this talk, we'll cover how and where jank is innovating, the amazing things jank can do, and why having a rich native Clojure dialect matters. This will include topics like our unprecedented C++ interop, gorgeous error messages, impressive performance, easy binary distribution, and more. Viewers will leave this talk inspired to use jank for game development, desktop GUI apps, scientific computing, and whatever they can dream. Speaker: Jeaye Wilkerson, Creator of jank, the native Clojure dialect Jeaye has a background in C++ systems programming, specifically with games and game engines. For the past two years, he's been focusing full-time on building jank so that the worlds of C++ and Clojure can be merged. 0:00 Introduction to Jank 3:02 Why C++ integration? 5:02 Host interoperability 10:35 Compilation model 12:56 Type system integration 17:32 C++ type representation 19:35 Build systems 21:43 Game development demo 24:07 Tooling and ecosystem 26:06 Error reporting 29:58 Performance analysis 32:18 Use cases and vision 34:17 The future of Jank 38:00 Closing demo