Clojure for the Brave and True

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Clojure for the Brave and True

About the Book

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!

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About the Author

Daniel Higginbotham
Daniel Higginbotham

Daniel has been doing programming things since he was a wee little lad, about yea high. You can find him using first person pronouns while writing about Clojure and other stuff at http://www.flyingmachinestudios.com

Table of Contents

  • The Programming Language You’ve Been Longing For
    • Journey through the Four Labyrinths
    • TOC at a Glance
    • Part 1: Environment Setup
    • Part 2: Language Fundamentals
    • Part 3: Extra-Fun Topics
  • Building, Running, and The REPL
    • First things first: What is Clojure?
    • Leiningen
    • Chapter Summary
  • Start Using Emacs
    • Installation
    • Configuration
    • Emacs Escape Hatch
    • Emacs Buffers
    • Working with Files
    • Key Bindings and Modes
    • Core Editing Terminology and Key Bindings
    • Continue Learning
    • Summary
  • Using Emacs with Clojure
    • Fire up your REPL!
    • Interlude: Emacs Windows and Frames
    • A Cornucopia of Useful Key Bindings
    • How to Handle Errors
    • Paredit
    • Chapter Summary
  • Do Things: a Clojure Crash Course
    • Syntax
    • Data Structures
    • Functions
    • Pulling It All Together
    • What Now?
  • Core Functions in Depth
    • Programming to Abstractions
    • The Sequence Abstraction
    • The Collection Abstraction
    • Function Functions
    • FWPD
    • Chapter Summary
  • Functional Programming
    • Pure Functions, What and Why
    • Living with Immutable Data Structures
    • Cool Things to do With Pure Functions
    • Peg Thing®
    • Chapter Summary
  • Organizing Your Project: a Librarian’s Tale
    • Your Project as a Library
    • Storing Objects with def
    • Creating and Switching to Namespaces
    • refer and alias
    • Real Project Organization
    • To Catch a Burglar
    • Summary
  • Clojure Alchemy: Reading, Evaluation, and Macros
    • The Philosopher’s Stone
    • The Reader
    • Reader Macros
    • Evaluation
    • Macros
    • A Syntax Abstraction Example: The -> Macro
  • Writing Macros
    • What Macros Are
    • Anatomy of a Macro
    • Building Lists for Evaluation
    • Applying Your Knowledge to a Macro
    • Refactoring a Macro & Unquote Splicing
    • Things to Watch Out For
    • Brews for the Brave and True
    • Some Final Advice
  • Concurrency, Parallelism, and State. And Zombies.
    • Why Parallel Programming Matters
    • Concurrency and Parallelism Concepts
    • Clojure Implementation: JVM Threads
    • Futures, Delays, and Promises
    • Escaping The Pit of Evil
    • Atoms
    • Watches and Validators
    • Refs
    • Vars
    • Stateless Concurrency and Parallelism
    • Summary
  • Master Concurrent Processes with core.async
    • Processes
    • Go Blocks, thread, Blocking, and Parking
    • The Hot Dog Process You’ve Been Longing For
    • Choice
    • Queues
    • Callbacks
    • Additional Resources
    • Summary
  • Interacting with Java
    • The JVM
    • Compiling and Running a Java Program
    • Java Interop
    • Commonly Used Java Classes
    • Summary
    • Resources
  • Multimethods, Records, and Protocols
    • Abstractions, Implementations, and Polymorphism
    • Multimethods
    • Protocols
    • Records
    • Further Study
    • Summary
  • Building and Developing with Leiningen
    • The Artifact Ecosystem
    • Plugins
    • Summary

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