Programming Clojure, 2nd Edition

Why Clojure?

All of the distinctive features in Clojure are there to provide simplicity, power, or both. Here are a few examples:

• Functional programming is simple, in that it isolates calculation from state and identity. Benefits: functional programs are easier to understand, write, test, optimize, and parallelize.

• Clojure’s Java interop forms are powerful, giving you direct access to the semantics of the Java platform. Benefits: you can have performance and semantic equivalence to Java. Most importantly, you will never need to “drop down” to a lower-level language for a little extra power.

• Lisp is simple in two critical ways: it separates reading from evaluation, and the language syntax is made from a tiny number of orthogonal parts. ...