Getting Clojure
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Behind every programming language lies a vision of how programs should be built. The vision behind Clojure is of a radically simple language framework holding together a sophisticated collection of programming features. Learning Clojure involves much more than just learning the mechanics of the language. To really get Clojure you need to understand the ideas underlying this structure of framework and features. You need this book: an accessible introduction to Clojure that focuses on the ideas behind the language as well as the practical details of writing code. Clojure attracts developers on the cutting edge and is arguably the best language for learning to program in the functional style without compromise. But this comes with a steep learning curve. Getting Clojure directly addresses this by teaching you how to think functionally as it teaches you the language. You'll learn about Clojure's powerful data structures and high-level functions, but you'll also learn what it means for a language to be functional, and how to think in Clojure's functional way. Each chapter of Getting Clojure takes a feature or two or three from the language, explains the syntax and the mechanics behind that feature so that you can make it work before digging into the deeper questions: What is the thinking behind the feature? And how does it fit in with the rest of the language? In Getting Clojure you'll learn Clojure's very simple syntax, but you'll also learn why that syntax is integral the way the language is constructed. You'll discover that most data structures in Clojure are immutable, but also why that leads to more reliable programs. And you'll see how easy it is to write Clojure functions and also how you can use those functions to build complex and capable systems. With real-world examples of how working Clojure programmers use the language, Getting Clojure will help you see the challenges of programming through the eye of experienced Clojure developers. What You Need: You will need to some background in programming. To follow along with the examples in the book, you will need Java 6 or new, Clojure 1.8 or 1.9, and Leiningen 2.
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As a polyglot programmer, the process of going through how-to-define-a -variable, how-to-define-a -function, how-to-use-text-editor, etc. when reading through an introductory book of a new programming language becomes really tedious. What I care about is not what do the language features do, but how are they designed that way, what problems would occur if these features are abused/misused/misunderstood, etc. To answer these questions, I often find myself wandering around GitHub libraries for hours reading code and jotting down “exemplary code snippets” in which language features are well-demonstrated. I don't often expect someone to curate these examples for me.
“Getting Clojure” and the Haskell book (coincidentally, written by a former Clojurist who now found sanctuary in Haskell) have been the only 2 times I could count on a introductory material for the whole process of learning a new programming language.
With that being sad, this book worth more than just 5/5 stars!
