Clojure for the Brave and True

This book will be published by No Starch Press when it's complete

*Clojure!*

For weeks, months — no! from the very moment you were born — you've felt it calling to you. Every time you've held your keyboard aloft, crying out in anguish over an incomprehensible class hierarchy; every time you've lain awake at night, disturbing your loved ones with sobs over a mutation-induced heisenbug; every time a race condition has caused you to pull out more of your ever-dwindling hair, some secret part of you has known that there has to be a better way.

Now, at long last, the instructional material you have in front of your face will unite you with the programming language you've been longing for.

Are you ready, brave reader? Are you ready to meet your true destiny? Get your best pair of parentheses: you're about to embark on the journey of a lifetime!

The Four Labyrinths

To wield Clojure to its fullest, you will need to find your way through the four labyrinths confronting every programmer learning a new language:

• The Cave of Artifacts. In its depths you'll learn to build, run, and distribute your own programs and use the libraries of others. You'll learn Clojure's relationship to the JVM.
• The Forest of Tooling. Getting your environment set up so that you can quickly try things out and learn from them is paramount.
• The Mountain of Language. As you ascend, you'll gain knowledge of Clojure's syntax, semantics, and data structures.
• The Cloud Castle of Mindset. In its rarified air you will come to know the why and how of lisp, functional programming, and immutability.

Such a quest is fraught with obstacles and dead ends. But fear not, dear reader! This guide is here to guide you!