6 ms·

Show HN: Clojure for the Brave and True – now free online

224 points by nonrecursive 11y ago

cp9 11y ago
I've been looking forward to this update for it seems like months. Clojure for the brave and true helped me understand core.async, can't wait to go through and read it again
njorth 11y ago
Thanks for publishing this gratis! I've been following along for some months, but put off ordering it because I bought Fogus and Hauser instead. Now there's a deadline on the 30% discount. I'll make a point this week to refer to "Brave and True" as much as possible.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- njorth 11y ago
  Reporting back to say the print version is infinitely better than the ePub and Web versions. Thanks again, it's a fun and easy reference work!
timroy 11y ago
I used this book to get started with Clojure, and I can't imagine learning Clojure any other way. I still refer to it, most recently for multimethods. I used to search the website for updates before they were officially released (like core.async, iirc). Vividly and clearly written, and very funny.
siavosh 11y ago
One of the best and most enjoyable ways to get started with Clojure, very well done. The part on setting up emacs was hugely helpful for a VI guy for me who's mucked around with other Lisp editor plugins.
- vosper 11y ago
  How do you feel about developing Clojure in Emacs, as a Vi guy? I'm also more at home in Vi, but I ended up going with Cursive when I began learning Clojure (and I highly recommend it), but I've always been curious about the Emacs option.
  - siavosh 11y ago
    I don't use it everyday, as Clojure is just a side hobby for me. I had tried LightTable and another dedicated lisp editor but at the end I just embraced Emacs instead of fighting it. I'm still a novice, and I struggle between a cheat sheet, but I figure it's such a rich environment for Lisp that I wouldn't be limited by it as I grew. So my philosophy has been, when in Lisp land, do as the Lisp people do... That said a friend of mine recommended some promising vi plugins which look quite good.
  - zematis 11y ago
    Try spacemacs. https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs/ https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs/ It's an emacs configuration meant to be a hybrid of the best in emacs and vim. I'm a vim user of several years, and am just beginning to do some clojure development of my own, so I recently made the switch. There's definitely a learning curve, but it's much, much less involved then learning either emacs or vim on their own. And you get to keep the vim editing style. A couple of things to get used to: - Space for the leader (it's actually great). - Escape mostly stops things, but not always. Ctrl-g is a safer option. - q closes many popup windows. - Using lisp to do everything in the config file (.spacemacs) The docs are a good place to start. Also C-h will bring up an extensive help menu. You'll want to add the clojure layer to your .spacemacs, as one of the dotspacemacs-configuration-layers.
    - vosper 11y ago
      Thanks, I'll take a look at it
- sotojuan 11y ago
  I agree. IMO the worst thing "beginner"-level programming books do is let the user figure out a good workflow and environment themselves. That said, I prefer vim with vim-fireplace and paredit-like plugins.
nonrecursive 11y ago
I'm pretty bummed that this submission is in HN purgatory for some reason, but it's really great to read these nice comments! I'm glad y'all have found the book useful and enjoyable :)
- dang 11y ago
  > in HN purgatory for some reason It set off the voting ring detector. We'll reduce the penalty, since the post is probably of interest to the community. Edit: we also put "Show HN" in the title, since it's your book, it's available to read, and it's a major piece of work.
  - nonrecursive 11y ago
    Thank you for the explanation and penalty reduction, you've made my day! I blame overzealous coworkers.
AlexeyBrin 11y ago
Looks great, bookmarked for later reading. Can you give us some insights in how successful is the business model of releasing a book free to read and paid at the same time ? I've seen this trend before and I was always wondered if the authors are satisfied with how much money they get this way.
sotojuan 11y ago
Gonna go over it this weekend ^^ Good job!
dudul 11y ago
I love when authors make their work available online for free. I usually go through a couple chapters and if I like the book I buy a print copy to support the author (and because I like having the actual book anyway, call me old-fashion)
shadykiller 11y ago
I know the author personally, having worked with him for some time before he left. Brilliant guy. He pretty much brought Clojure into our tech stack :)
- agumonkey 11y ago
  What was it before ? plain old Java or a totally different infrastructure ?
  - shadykiller 11y ago
    We mostly had a ruby stack. It worked for most stuff albeit being slow. We stayed away from java until clojure came in. Also starting with elixir - taking inspiration from functional clojure for networking stuff.
base698 11y ago
I bought the book in the prerelease form after reading most of it online because it was so great! I found it better structured than "Joy of Clojure". Definitely a work of love. An aside, I was a former Raleigh native, and was surprised to see such a Clojure pocket in the area. Made me wish I was still around!
Keats 11y ago
Interestingly enough, the page crashes my firefox 100% of the time (linux / firefox 41) but works fine in chrome
setheron 11y ago
I bought the pre-release. I hope it starts shipping!~ What a great book. Got me hooked on Clojure. I wish he made a companion book for more advanced use cases. I.e. advanced workflows, testing, project layout etc..
- nonrecursive 11y ago
  I plan on creating more content :) I wrote a blog post with a couple more details (http://www.flyingmachinestudios.com/programming/brave-and-new/ http://www.flyingmachinestudios.com/programming/brave-and-ne..., fourth paragraph). But yes, I want to cover testing, web development, and more. Right now I'm working on an in-depth explanation of reducers. edit: also, clojure applied is a good book for what you're talking about
dudul 11y ago
Am I the only one trying to order it and facing the problem that there is no way to select shipping method at checkout?
- mackenziekira 11y ago
  Hi dudul, if you wouldn't mind shooting an email about the error to info@nostarch.com, we should be able to help you out! Thanks.
  - dudul 11y ago
    It eventually worked. Not sure what happened, but after a couple tries I was able to checkout with the shipping option. Thanks, can't wait to receive the book!
joesmo 11y ago
This was my first Clojure book and it's quite fantastic for a beginner with no prior Clojure or functional experience.
joeevans1000 11y ago
Land of Lisp is another great book... not Clojure per se but an excellent Clojure primer. Includes cartoons, too, which I like.
ticviking 11y ago
Hey, this is the book that got me to try clojure out. I'm curious though what do peoples windows clojure workflows look like, as most tutorials I'm seeing are in mac or *nix
- l34ch 11y ago
  Mine is just cygwin with intellij and the cursive plugin. You don't really need much else. Oh and install leinigen to setup and manage projects.
edko 11y ago
Just bought the e-book. Really fun read!

224 points by nonrecursive 11y ago

cp9 11y ago

I've been looking forward to this update for it seems like months. Clojure for the brave and true helped me understand core.async, can't wait to go through and read it again

njorth 11y ago

Thanks for publishing this gratis! I've been following along for some months, but put off ordering it because I bought Fogus and Hauser instead. Now there's a deadline on the 30% discount. I'll make a point this week to refer to "Brave and True" as much as possible.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
njorth 11y ago
Reporting back to say the print version is infinitely better than the ePub and Web versions. Thanks again, it's a fun and easy reference work!

timroy 11y ago

I used this book to get started with Clojure, and I can't imagine learning Clojure any other way. I still refer to it, most recently for multimethods. I used to search the website for updates before they were officially released (like core.async, iirc). Vividly and clearly written, and very funny.

siavosh 11y ago

One of the best and most enjoyable ways to get started with Clojure, very well done. The part on setting up emacs was hugely helpful for a VI guy for me who's mucked around with other Lisp editor plugins.

vosper 11y ago
How do you feel about developing Clojure in Emacs, as a Vi guy? I'm also more at home in Vi, but I ended up going with Cursive when I began learning Clojure (and I highly recommend it), but I've always been curious about the Emacs option.
- siavosh 11y ago
  I don't use it everyday, as Clojure is just a side hobby for me. I had tried LightTable and another dedicated lisp editor but at the end I just embraced Emacs instead of fighting it. I'm still a novice, and I struggle between a cheat sheet, but I figure it's such a rich environment for Lisp that I wouldn't be limited by it as I grew. So my philosophy has been, when in Lisp land, do as the Lisp people do... That said a friend of mine recommended some promising vi plugins which look quite good.
- zematis 11y ago
  Try spacemacs. https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs/ https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs/ It's an emacs configuration meant to be a hybrid of the best in emacs and vim. I'm a vim user of several years, and am just beginning to do some clojure development of my own, so I recently made the switch. There's definitely a learning curve, but it's much, much less involved then learning either emacs or vim on their own. And you get to keep the vim editing style. A couple of things to get used to: - Space for the leader (it's actually great). - Escape mostly stops things, but not always. Ctrl-g is a safer option. - q closes many popup windows. - Using lisp to do everything in the config file (.spacemacs) The docs are a good place to start. Also C-h will bring up an extensive help menu. You'll want to add the clojure layer to your .spacemacs, as one of the dotspacemacs-configuration-layers.
  - vosper 11y ago
    Thanks, I'll take a look at it
sotojuan 11y ago
I agree. IMO the worst thing "beginner"-level programming books do is let the user figure out a good workflow and environment themselves. That said, I prefer vim with vim-fireplace and paredit-like plugins.

nonrecursive 11y ago

I'm pretty bummed that this submission is in HN purgatory for some reason, but it's really great to read these nice comments! I'm glad y'all have found the book useful and enjoyable :)

dang 11y ago
> in HN purgatory for some reason It set off the voting ring detector. We'll reduce the penalty, since the post is probably of interest to the community. Edit: we also put "Show HN" in the title, since it's your book, it's available to read, and it's a major piece of work.
- nonrecursive 11y ago
  Thank you for the explanation and penalty reduction, you've made my day! I blame overzealous coworkers.

AlexeyBrin 11y ago

Looks great, bookmarked for later reading. Can you give us some insights in how successful is the business model of releasing a book free to read and paid at the same time ? I've seen this trend before and I was always wondered if the authors are satisfied with how much money they get this way.

sotojuan 11y ago

Gonna go over it this weekend ^^ Good job!

dudul 11y ago

I love when authors make their work available online for free. I usually go through a couple chapters and if I like the book I buy a print copy to support the author (and because I like having the actual book anyway, call me old-fashion)

shadykiller 11y ago

I know the author personally, having worked with him for some time before he left. Brilliant guy. He pretty much brought Clojure into our tech stack :)

agumonkey 11y ago
What was it before ? plain old Java or a totally different infrastructure ?
- shadykiller 11y ago
  We mostly had a ruby stack. It worked for most stuff albeit being slow. We stayed away from java until clojure came in. Also starting with elixir - taking inspiration from functional clojure for networking stuff.

base698 11y ago

I bought the book in the prerelease form after reading most of it online because it was so great! I found it better structured than "Joy of Clojure". Definitely a work of love. An aside, I was a former Raleigh native, and was surprised to see such a Clojure pocket in the area. Made me wish I was still around!

Keats 11y ago

Interestingly enough, the page crashes my firefox 100% of the time (linux / firefox 41) but works fine in chrome

setheron 11y ago

I bought the pre-release. I hope it starts shipping!~ What a great book. Got me hooked on Clojure. I wish he made a companion book for more advanced use cases. I.e. advanced workflows, testing, project layout etc..

nonrecursive 11y ago
I plan on creating more content :) I wrote a blog post with a couple more details (http://www.flyingmachinestudios.com/programming/brave-and-new/ http://www.flyingmachinestudios.com/programming/brave-and-ne..., fourth paragraph). But yes, I want to cover testing, web development, and more. Right now I'm working on an in-depth explanation of reducers. edit: also, clojure applied is a good book for what you're talking about

dudul 11y ago

Am I the only one trying to order it and facing the problem that there is no way to select shipping method at checkout?

mackenziekira 11y ago
Hi dudul, if you wouldn't mind shooting an email about the error to info@nostarch.com, we should be able to help you out! Thanks.
- dudul 11y ago
  It eventually worked. Not sure what happened, but after a couple tries I was able to checkout with the shipping option. Thanks, can't wait to receive the book!

joesmo 11y ago

This was my first Clojure book and it's quite fantastic for a beginner with no prior Clojure or functional experience.

joeevans1000 11y ago

Land of Lisp is another great book... not Clojure per se but an excellent Clojure primer. Includes cartoons, too, which I like.

ticviking 11y ago

Hey, this is the book that got me to try clojure out. I'm curious though what do peoples windows clojure workflows look like, as most tutorials I'm seeing are in mac or *nix

l34ch 11y ago
Mine is just cygwin with intellij and the cursive plugin. You don't really need much else. Oh and install leinigen to setup and manage projects.

edko 11y ago

Just bought the e-book. Really fun read!