Clojure Programming

Chapter 1. Down the Rabbit Hole

If you’re reading this book, you are presumably open to learning new programming languages. On the other hand, we assume that you expect reciprocity for the time and effort you’ll expend to learn a new language, some tangible benefits that can make you more productive, your team more effective, and your organization more flexible.

We believe that you will find this virtuous cycle in effect as you learn, apply, and leverage Clojure. As we are fond of saying, Clojure demands that you raise your game, and pays you back for doing so.

As software developers, we often build up a complex and sometimes very personal relationship with our tools and languages. Deciding which raw materials to use is sometimes dominated by pragmatic and legacy concerns. However, all other things being equal, programmers prefer using whatever maximally enhances their productivity and hopefully enables us to fulfill our potential to build useful, elegant systems. As the old saying goes, we want whatever makes the easy stuff easy, and the hard stuff possible.

Why Clojure?

Clojure is a programming language that lives up to that standard. Forged of a unique blend of the best features of a number of different programming languages—including various Lisp implementations, Ruby, Python, Java, Haskell, and others—Clojure provides a set of capabilities suited to address many of the most frustrating problems programmers struggle with today and those we can see barreling toward us over the horizon. ...