4 ms·

I was just considering learning Clojure recently, what resources would you recommend?

by mi_lk 8y ago

kamaal 8y ago
If you already know a little Lisp, The Joy of Clojure is a very good book to start at. But I went through a complete journey of reading ANSI Common Lisp, The Little Schemer, The Seasoned Schemer, On Lisp and various other scheme material on the internet. So syntax and other Lisp related stuff wasn't the problem. The Joy of Clojure book showed the Clojure way of doing things really well. If you have to start on absolute basics of Lisp, I'd recommend watching the SICP lectures and reading PG's ANSI Common Lisp book.
Ocerge 8y ago
Clojure for the Brave and True by Daniel Higginbotham is a wonderful intro into the entire ecosystem (Leiningen, Clojure/lisps in general, Java interop, emacs, etc.). If you're already experienced with Lisps, you could probably start with The Joy of Clojure.
libx 8y ago
Many people talked about reading the book "Clojure for the Brave and True", which I did. It's nice to begin with it for the first chapters and read the rest later, after some coding, in my opinion. For me, the best resource was the MOOC on Clojure available at https://moocfi.github.io/courses/2014/clojure/ https://moocfi.github.io/courses/2014/clojure/ You can do the exercises, have the system check your results, but don't get grades or any certificate of completion. I didn't finish the course as I moved to Elixir, although I liked Clojure very much. Elixir is also functional, much better for newcomers, lots of support, people, documentation, examples, books, courses, growing very fast... And one doesn't need to wait several seconds to start the virtual machine.
- Fellshard 8y ago
  It's a simple and gentle introduction, but surprisingly effective at slowly immersing you into the language to the point that you feel comfortable exploring on your own.
raspasov 8y ago
The Clojure Programming book, it's excellent both for beginners and advanced users (I've been using Clojure since 2013). https://www.amazon.com/Clojure-Programming-Practical-Lisp-World/dp/1449394701 https://www.amazon.com/Clojure-Programming-Practical-Lisp-Wo... A lot of tips and insight of how to do and not to do things in Clojure without too much hype. "Practical Lisp for the Java World" - the title does not lie :).
- puredanger 8y ago
  Clojure Programming is great, but is at this point pretty old. Thanks to the stability of Clojure, the language parts are largely still accurate, but it is missing features from the last several Clojure releases and the the evolution of the ecosystem outside the language.
  - raspasov 8y ago
    Yes, I agree. Your book (Programming Clojure) is great at that and quite up-to-date I believe.
puredanger 8y ago
Getting Clojure (Russ Olsen), Clojure for the Brave and True (Daniel Higginbotham), Living Clojure (Carin Meier), and Programming Clojure (me, Stuart Halloway, Aaron Bedra) are the best intro books, in my opinion.
pmlamotte 8y ago
In addition to Clojure for the Brave and True that others have recommended, http://www.4clojure.com http://www.4clojure.com is a collection of bite sized problems where you fill in the blank to solve the problem. After solving a problem, go look at a few top users and compare against their solution. When I was first getting into lisp/functional programming a few years ago I would find that after writing a 6-8+ line solution on some of the tougher problems, the top users would have a way of doing it in 1-2 either due to a standard library function I didn't know about or they just took a better approach overall.

I was just considering learning Clojure recently, what resources would you recommend?

by mi_lk 8y ago

I was just considering learning Clojure recently, what resources would you recommend?

If you already know a little Lisp, The Joy of Clojure is a very good book to start at. But I went through a complete journey of reading ANSI Common Lisp, The Little Schemer, The Seasoned Schemer, On Lisp and various other scheme material on the internet. So syntax and other Lisp related stuff wasn't the problem. The Joy of Clojure book showed the Clojure way of doing things really well. If you have to start on absolute basics of Lisp, I'd recommend watching the SICP lectures and reading PG's ANSI Common Lisp book.

Ocerge 8y ago

Clojure for the Brave and True by Daniel Higginbotham is a wonderful intro into the entire ecosystem (Leiningen, Clojure/lisps in general, Java interop, emacs, etc.). If you're already experienced with Lisps, you could probably start with The Joy of Clojure.

libx 8y ago

Many people talked about reading the book "Clojure for the Brave and True", which I did. It's nice to begin with it for the first chapters and read the rest later, after some coding, in my opinion. For me, the best resource was the MOOC on Clojure available at https://moocfi.github.io/courses/2014/clojure/ https://moocfi.github.io/courses/2014/clojure/ You can do the exercises, have the system check your results, but don't get grades or any certificate of completion. I didn't finish the course as I moved to Elixir, although I liked Clojure very much. Elixir is also functional, much better for newcomers, lots of support, people, documentation, examples, books, courses, growing very fast... And one doesn't need to wait several seconds to start the virtual machine.

Fellshard 8y ago
It's a simple and gentle introduction, but surprisingly effective at slowly immersing you into the language to the point that you feel comfortable exploring on your own.

raspasov 8y ago

The Clojure Programming book, it's excellent both for beginners and advanced users (I've been using Clojure since 2013). https://www.amazon.com/Clojure-Programming-Practical-Lisp-World/dp/1449394701 https://www.amazon.com/Clojure-Programming-Practical-Lisp-Wo... A lot of tips and insight of how to do and not to do things in Clojure without too much hype. "Practical Lisp for the Java World" - the title does not lie :).

puredanger 8y ago
Clojure Programming is great, but is at this point pretty old. Thanks to the stability of Clojure, the language parts are largely still accurate, but it is missing features from the last several Clojure releases and the the evolution of the ecosystem outside the language.
- raspasov 8y ago
  Yes, I agree. Your book (Programming Clojure) is great at that and quite up-to-date I believe.

puredanger 8y ago

Getting Clojure (Russ Olsen), Clojure for the Brave and True (Daniel Higginbotham), Living Clojure (Carin Meier), and Programming Clojure (me, Stuart Halloway, Aaron Bedra) are the best intro books, in my opinion.

pmlamotte 8y ago

In addition to Clojure for the Brave and True that others have recommended, http://www.4clojure.com http://www.4clojure.com is a collection of bite sized problems where you fill in the blank to solve the problem. After solving a problem, go look at a few top users and compare against their solution. When I was first getting into lisp/functional programming a few years ago I would find that after writing a 6-8+ line solution on some of the tougher problems, the top users would have a way of doing it in 1-2 either due to a standard library function I didn't know about or they just took a better approach overall.