Living Clojure: An Introduction and Training Plan for Developers

by Carin Meier

If you're an experienced programmer who has not worked with Clojure before, this guide is the perfect thorough but gentle introduction for you. Author Carin Meier not only provides a practical overview of this JVM language and its functional programming concepts, but also includes a complete hands-on training course to help you learn Clojure in a structured way.The first half of the book takes you through Clojure's unique design and lets you try your hand at two Clojure projects, including a web app. The holistic course in second half provides you with critical tools and resources, including ways to plug into the Clojure community.Understand the basic structure of a Clojure expressionLearn how to shape and control code in a functional wayDiscover how Clojure handles real-world state and concurrencyTake advantage of Java classes and learn how Clojure handles polymorphismManage and use libraries in a Clojure projectUse the core.async library for asynchronous and concurrent communicationExplore the power of macros in Clojure programmingLearn how to think in Clojure by following the book's seven-week training course

Genres: Programming, Computer Science, Technology, Nonfiction, Software, Computers

242 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 25, 2015

Reviews

[Alexander Yakushev · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is not a very good book.

It is incredibly broad and shallow. The author touches topics that shouldn't even be in a beginner's book, like ClojureScript, and core.async, and Ring/Compojure; and at the same time the information is not deep, it's surficial at best.

Unclear is the target audience of the book. The author says that it's for beginners who know at least one other programming language, but the complexity and minutia change so much from page to page that I can't imagine a novice actually learning something from here.

I don't know if the deadlines were rushed, or for some other reason, but the book came out dull and mediocre. So sad.

[Vít Kotačka · Rating 5 out of 5]

Enjoyable book for Clojure beginners

I met Carin (aka Gigasquid) on one of the (Middle) European Java conference and for me, she was the paramount of the gig. And because I'm returning to the Clojure after 5 years now, I grasped her book. It was a good choice.

In the beginning, Carin makes a good parallel - if you want to learn a new language, you should treat it like if you want to learn to run. It makes sense, you can't train for marathon in few weeks. Clojure is the same - you can learn the syntax and bunch of functions in couple of days. Maybe even a small project. But you won't stick. The biggest obstacle would be probably a mindset.

Start slowly, no rush. You can run like hell, like Alice in Wonderland, but you'll stay on the same spot. So, run slowly with perseverance and endurance.

[Alex Ott · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really 7/10. This book is short, practical introduction into Clojure for people who heard about it, and want to quickly start to use it. It covers very basics of syntax, collections, concurrent programming & webdev. But it lacks deepness (imho - that's why 7/10).

Good thing is the "training plan" at the end of the book...

[Anil Thaplar · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a good first book for someone who has not done any work on lisp family of languages. I would recommend Brave Clojure( BC) after this as I started of with BC but it seems to jump the gun a bit at places though a good 2nd book.

This seem like a correct order

Living clojure -> Clojure for brace and true -> the joy of clojure

[arathunku · Rating 3 out of 5]

Things I liked:
- last 2-3 weeks of "training"
- good descriptions of features of Clojure
- structure of the book
- Wonderland

That's the first book of the author so I'm trying to look gently at it. There were a lot of things I didn't like although I'm total beginner in the Clojure world such as:

- lacks of tests for examples
- description of futures without *clear* and *real world* examples: agents, refs
- first few weeks of training were just copied from 4Clojure
- I think tests are very crucial part of the development and repl driven development is definitely not a good long term solution => definitively more sections about testing unity/integration
- chapter on community; list of conferences, description of IRC, etc. could be just an *short* appendix.

[Mattias Lundell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book for a beginner. Nothing bad with the transducer chapter but it felt a little bit misplaced.

[Andrei Maxim · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm a software engineer with over 15 years of experience, having worked with C#, ASP.NET and Ruby. "If you are coming from another language like Ruby or Java, you should feel right at home" says the author in the preface, however...

Even though the book has around 220 pages (or 242 if you include the preface and the index), there are actually just 120 pages about Clojure, 30 pages about building web applications with Clojure and about 70 pages with a training plan.

The parts about Clojure are very sparse. I feel that the main challenge a programmer coming from Java or Ruby is not about the syntax, but about the functional programming mindset. There is nothing about that here if you're used to working with objects and now you'd like to work with a FP language like Clojure. In the chapter with lists, maps, vectors and sets there's just one paragraph about immutability but that's about it and the generic examples from Alice in Wonderland aren't helping.

I'm guessing that the author was aiming for something along the lines of "The C Programming Language" book by K&R, which was short and to the point but C was supposed to be a portable assembler, while Clojure aims to be a much higher-level language and I think that trivial examples aren't too useful.

Normally I would dismiss most of my comment due to a possible culture clash. I'm from Eastern Europe and I guess I'm more used to learning things in a specific way, while the storytelling aspect might be more interesting for Western Europe (incidentally, the only other 2-star review here is from somebody that seems to be from Eastern Europe as well). However, I really can't understand why somebody would spend just 10 pages on core.async (for example) and then use 50 pages to print the exact text that you find in the 4Clojure.com problems (and this includes the URL to said problems!). Sure, the training plan is a nice idea but this could have been easily reduced to 2-3 pages, like: "Week 1, Day 1: Problems 3-12, Day 2: Problems 13-18, 35, 36" and so on.

In the end, I'm not really sure which is the actual target audience for this book. I'm guessing that it might be a good option for somebody that read a book or two about Clojure a while ago and wanted to quickly get up to speed. Otherwise, if you're coming from other non-lispy languages, don't expect too much.

[Tony Poerio · Rating 5 out of 5]

A gentle and very effective introduction to Clojure. This is probably the book I'd recommend for someone just getting into Lisp for the first time. I've dabbled in Clojure off-and-on for awhile now, but it never really stuck.

The focus on projects and how to use Lein is also invaluable. Very few books go into detail on these facets of the language, but as a day-to-day programmer, these mechanics are possibly even more important than the language semantics.

Carin's focus in this book is really on taking you from 'zero' to 'productive' as quickly as possible.

I also appreciate the training regimen in the 2nd half of the book, as well as her overview of the Clojure community, & where to find help. This is the kind of information that really makes a language stick.

Far too many intro-level books focus *only* on syntax, to the exclusion of all else. In that way, this book is quite innovative -- a broader approach than I'm used to programming books. Highly recommended.

[Chrisman · Rating 4 out of 5]

## Why I Picked It Up ##

Because the kids in the basement were talking about clojure, and this book was recommended

## What I Liked About It ##

Quick intro to clojure.

It seems like the ecosystem is kind of complex. Especially once we got into web development with clojurescript. It just seemed like a lot of puzzle pieces to understand and fit together. I'd be curious to try it.

## What I Didn't Like About It ##

Part 2: "Living Clojure" isn't what I wanted out of this read. It was a list of online resources and exercises. Which is a great way to learn! But I just wanted to skim this book and get a very high level understanding of the language and its tooling. Consequently, I skipped over almost all of Part 2. I might come back to it in the future! But it's not what I wanted out of this read.

## Who I'd Recommend It To ##

Fans of Java, Lisp, web dev, and Rich Hickey.

[Helio · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great way to get in touch with Clojure. Very small chapters with straight forward examples to get using with the Clojure anatomy. I’ve read from cover to cover in a few days without try anything but the examples in REPL. I’m feeling comfortable to get a in-depth Clojure’s book with this knowledge. I don’t recommend though, to anyone who may have some understanding of Clojure.

[Heather · Rating 4 out of 5]

Worked through the first part (not the 8 week plan part) and that took about 8-10 hours (did it 2 hours at a time over a week), so if you want to do the whole book, plan that.

The weekly/daily practice part at the end: still working through it when I have time.

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent, lucid intro to the syntax and the semantics of the language. I learned Java for the first time somewhat thoroughly using Kathy Sierra's book in 2005. This is clear like that -- only Clojure is about 1-2 orders of magnitude more powerful.

[Andres Moreira · Rating 5 out of 5]

Concise and practical book

I’m a software engineer that has worked mainly in Python, and this book worked excellent to get up to speed and learn Clojure.

I’ll highly recommended it for programmers that needs a quick intro to Clojure.

[Philip Hollenback · Rating 4 out of 5]

Was trying to do a self-study with this, but got too busy. Hope to get back to it some day. Very well written.

[Eddy Chou · Rating 5 out of 5]

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[Daw-Ran Liou · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is very practical guide for people coming to Clojure as their second language, just like me.

[Jade Costa · Rating 2 out of 5]

I believe this rating is my fault (at least part of it). I was expecting a deeper book.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

I finally learned a good bit of Clojure with the fun exercises in this book, but I eventually tired of the puzzles, so I started skipping those kata. I enjoyed this book and the writing style.

[Anton · Rating 3 out of 5]

Это хорошая обзорная книга про Clojure, знакомящая со всеми основными принципами языка и тем как собрать на нем базовое веб приложение. Ровно то, что было мне нужно.

[Jacob Tjornholm · Rating 4 out of 5]

For beginners, I think this book is very good. I really like the level of detail in most chapters, and I especially enjoyed the variance in pace: Most chapters go methodically over a certain topic, but there is also a chapter that combines everything to create a web app with a lot of moving parts in a single chapter.

I liked most of the training plan a lot. Really good idea to just start with 4clojure exercises, because why not? They're very good and just the right level. The exercises created by the author were also very good and provided me with interesting challenges.

I do have a few minor complaints, though. After a while, it felt to me like the Alice in Wonderland references became a bit awkward. I don't mind references to fiction throughout a book in general, quite the contrary, I find it quite refreshing. But in this case, I found that the examples were sometimes a bit weird and more contrived than necessary.

Also, the final exercise was a bit of a disappointment. The last week of the training plan is dedicated to building a complete web app and deploying it to Heroku.

There are instructions on how to get an app running on Heroku, which is quite helpful. After these instructions, I was expecting a description of the app to build, but this is not how the exercise is designed. Instead, the author allocates a hammock day for the student to come up with their own good idea for what to build.

I'm sure this works well for some people, but I would much have preferred to be told exactly what to build. For me, coming up with an app idea is simply an annoying distraction at a point where I'm eager to start applying everything I've read about.

This would also have allowed the author to design a really good challenge that covered much of the material in the book - possibly with some optional features.

In any case, I can definitely recommend this book, especially for beginners.

[Pablo · Rating 3 out of 5]

What is quite unique about this book is the *training plan* it has at the end. I believe more emphasis should have been given to it and it should be at the beginning or spread throughout the book, so you start with the plan as you start the book.

From the two introductory books I read regarding Clojure, this one was the most accessible although like almost every other book out there, it assumes you are already a programmer.

[Yamir Encarnacion · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked that it was short. However, the book felt like it touched on the tip of the iceberg. I would have liked more in depth information on how to build a web app. After reading this book, I feel I have learned the fundamentals but will need to supplement the information I learned here in order to have a better grasp on Clojure.

[Delhi Irc]

Location: GG7 IRC
Accession No: DL027475
Location: PTI IRC
Accession No: DL027476

[Jan Ryswyck · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great introduction to Clojure.

[Juan Ponce · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good clojure book, but it still lacks something, I can't tell what