Clojure is a dynamic language for the Java Virtual Machine, with a compelling combination of features:
Clojure is elegant. Clojure's clean, careful design lets you write programs that get right to the essence of a problem, without a lot of clutter and ceremony.
Clojure is Lisp reloaded. Clojure has the power inherent in Lisp, but is not constrained by the history of Lisp.
Clojure is a functional language. Data structures are immutable, and functions tend to be side-effect free. This makes it easier to write correct programs, and to compose large programs from smaller ones.
Clojure is concurrent. Rather than error-prone locking, Clojure provides software transactional memory.
Clojure embraces Java. Calling from Clojure to Java is direct, and goes through no translation layer.
Clojure is fast. Wherever you need it, you can get the exact same performance that you could get from hand-written Java code.
Many other languages offer some of these features, but the combination of them all makes Clojure sparkle. Programming Clojure shows you why these features are so important, and how you can use Clojure to build powerful programs quickly.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
About the Author
Stuart Halloway is a member of Clojure/core and CTO at Relevance, where he spends his time on secret projects for world domination, and watching Phineas and Ferb.
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More About the Author
Stuart Dabbs Halloway is a co-founder of Relevance, Inc. Stuart is the author of Programming Clojure, Component Development for the Java Platform, and Rails for Java Developers. Stuart regularly speaks at industry events including the No Fluff, Just Stuff Java Symposiums, the Pragmatic Studio, RubyConf, and RailsConf.
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
88 of 92 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars
Here is a "just average" book about an amazing, momentous language
December 17, 2009
By Kelly Jones
Format:Paperback
It is hard to be objective when reviewing this book. I have struggled to separate my enthusiasm for "Clojure The Language" from my honest opinion of "Clojure The Book".
Clojure is a remarkable language.
Clojure The Language deserves five stars every day of the week and twice on Sunday.
Clojure "The Book", on the other hand, is simply passable. The book is "okay".
Clojure is remarkable partly because Lisp is remarkable, and partly because Clojure has taken the difficult concept of concurrency and turned it into an exhilarating, attractive, efficient, sensible tool. I highly recommend that all curious programmers try the Clojure language.
Unfortunately, I cannot give this book a high recommendation. This is not a bad book. But it is definitely not a 5-star book.
The 5-star score would place this book in the same category as such beloved books as the Flanagan/Matsumoto Ruby book, or Meyers' Effective C++, or even Rossum's original (now deprecated) An Introduction to Python. Scoring the Stuart Halloway book as "on par" with those other books just simply does not ring true.
The Stuart Halloway book is a fast and easy read. However, it is more like a series of really nice blog entries than a solid introductory programming language book. I enjoyed Stuart's writing style, and I even enjoyed all of the sample code.
However, at the end of the day, "there is no there there".
I needed to refer to other books in order to become PRODUCTIVE with Clojure. When I purchased the Halloway book, no other Clojure books had been written yet, so I relied upon books that were written about coding techniques in other flavors of Lisp.
Reading the Halloway book was like watching a really fun and captivating movie trailer. It made me stop and say "Wow! That was cool! ... um... okay. Now can I watch the entire movie?"
If you are already fluent in another Lisp dialect, then you probably do not need this book.
In fact, if you already know some variant of Lisp, then you need to learn about the JVM and various Java platform ideas far more than you need to study Clojure itself. Clojure itself will come naturally to a "lisper". Yet you may be mystified about where to put your jar files and about what the various Java exceptions are telling you. And if you want to debug your Clojure programs, you will likely be using a Java debugger.
If you know Lisp, you can combine that previous knowledge with the Clojure API documentation, and the excellent Mark Volkmann website, and that will probably be enough. An "industrial strength" book on Java (including various compilation and deployment techniques) will help you much more than a book on Clojure.
If you have never programmed in any sort of Lisp at all, then I can almost guarantee that this book on Clojure will not be enough to get you fully "up and running" with Clojure. Most certainly you will learn how to write small scripts and games like the ones demonstrated in the book, but you will probably start to feel the weakness of this book as soon as you want to build something larger.
Clojure is a remarkable language.
Clojure The Language deserves five stars every day of the week and twice on Sunday.
Clojure "The Book", on the other hand, is simply passable. The book is "okay".
Clojure is remarkable partly because Lisp is remarkable, and partly because Clojure has taken the difficult concept of concurrency and turned it into an exhilarating, attractive, efficient, sensible tool. I highly recommend that all curious programmers try the Clojure language.
Unfortunately, I cannot give this book a high recommendation. This is not a bad book. But it is definitely not a 5-star book.
The 5-star score would place this book in the same category as such beloved books as the Flanagan/Matsumoto Ruby book, or Meyers' Effective C++, or even Rossum's original (now deprecated) An Introduction to Python. Scoring the Stuart Halloway book as "on par" with those other books just simply does not ring true.
The Stuart Halloway book is a fast and easy read. However, it is more like a series of really nice blog entries than a solid introductory programming language book. I enjoyed Stuart's writing style, and I even enjoyed all of the sample code.
However, at the end of the day, "there is no there there".
I needed to refer to other books in order to become PRODUCTIVE with Clojure. When I purchased the Halloway book, no other Clojure books had been written yet, so I relied upon books that were written about coding techniques in other flavors of Lisp.
Reading the Halloway book was like watching a really fun and captivating movie trailer. It made me stop and say "Wow! That was cool! ... um... okay. Now can I watch the entire movie?"
If you are already fluent in another Lisp dialect, then you probably do not need this book.
In fact, if you already know some variant of Lisp, then you need to learn about the JVM and various Java platform ideas far more than you need to study Clojure itself. Clojure itself will come naturally to a "lisper". Yet you may be mystified about where to put your jar files and about what the various Java exceptions are telling you. And if you want to debug your Clojure programs, you will likely be using a Java debugger.
If you know Lisp, you can combine that previous knowledge with the Clojure API documentation, and the excellent Mark Volkmann website, and that will probably be enough. An "industrial strength" book on Java (including various compilation and deployment techniques) will help you much more than a book on Clojure.
If you have never programmed in any sort of Lisp at all, then I can almost guarantee that this book on Clojure will not be enough to get you fully "up and running" with Clojure. Most certainly you will learn how to write small scripts and games like the ones demonstrated in the book, but you will probably start to feel the weakness of this book as soon as you want to build something larger.
26 of 29 people found the following review helpful
By Karl Rosaen
Format:Paperback
The chances are slim that you are considering buying this book because your job requires you use Clojure, but rather, like me, you are wondering whether Clojure is worth your time. Is it just another programming language fad? What can I do with it that I can't with more established languages like C++, Java or Python? If and only if you are satisfied that it is worth your time will you begin to want to know all of the details of how to use Clojure.
Programming Clojure strikes a nice balance between these two jobs, both justifying Clojure's existence, and lucidly explaining its key features. After a Foreword by Rich Hickey, the language's founder, the preface highlights its key features, and provides a frame of reference for how to think about Clojure from a variety of perspectives (coming from an OO, functional or lisp background). From there it's off to the races.
I bought a preview of this book and actually spent the better part of a Saturday plowing through much of it on my laptop, switching over to the command line to play along. Since then, I have gone back to re-read different sections as needed. Though the public documents at clojure.org are quite good, this book is definitely worth paying for if you are serious about learning Clojure.
Finally, it's worth mentioning that my experience buying the ebook / print combo directly from the publisher's site was good, providing both pdf and a variety of ebook formats (including one that looks nice on the kindle).
Programming Clojure strikes a nice balance between these two jobs, both justifying Clojure's existence, and lucidly explaining its key features. After a Foreword by Rich Hickey, the language's founder, the preface highlights its key features, and provides a frame of reference for how to think about Clojure from a variety of perspectives (coming from an OO, functional or lisp background). From there it's off to the races.
I bought a preview of this book and actually spent the better part of a Saturday plowing through much of it on my laptop, switching over to the command line to play along. Since then, I have gone back to re-read different sections as needed. Though the public documents at clojure.org are quite good, this book is definitely worth paying for if you are serious about learning Clojure.
Finally, it's worth mentioning that my experience buying the ebook / print combo directly from the publisher's site was good, providing both pdf and a variety of ebook formats (including one that looks nice on the kindle).
14 of 15 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
This book lacks anything close to sufficient depth. Clojure is a deep language and Programming Clojure simply fails to do it justice. Most of the book reads like API documentation. The example code, mostly one liners, leave the reader feeling unsatisfied. What if I want to write a program that's more than five lines of code?
Stuart Halloway glosses over Clojure's fundamental language paradigms, like functional programming, recursion, and Java. While I suspect it would be near impossible to explain functional programming without devoting an entire book to it, Stuart Halloway doesn't even try, instead hoping that the reader will magically figure it out on his own.
The layout of the book is plain frustrating, leading me to wonder if Halloway actually wrote the chapters in the order that they're presented. More than once, Halloway uses the obnoxious literary device of referring to chapters after the current one. "We'll talk about this more in Chapter 18!" Just let me read the chapters in order, Stuart!
Save yourself some mental anguish and purchase The Joy of Clojure: Thinking the Clojure Way or Practical Clojure (Expert's Voice in Open Source) instead.
Stuart Halloway glosses over Clojure's fundamental language paradigms, like functional programming, recursion, and Java. While I suspect it would be near impossible to explain functional programming without devoting an entire book to it, Stuart Halloway doesn't even try, instead hoping that the reader will magically figure it out on his own.
The layout of the book is plain frustrating, leading me to wonder if Halloway actually wrote the chapters in the order that they're presented. More than once, Halloway uses the obnoxious literary device of referring to chapters after the current one. "We'll talk about this more in Chapter 18!" Just let me read the chapters in order, Stuart!
Save yourself some mental anguish and purchase The Joy of Clojure: Thinking the Clojure Way or Practical Clojure (Expert's Voice in Open Source) instead.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
2.0 out of 5 stars
Overrated
I whole-heartedly agree with Kelly Jones and Robert P. Seaton. This book is very overrated. While Halloway's style is easy to read, the book lacks depth and is seemingly unordered. Read more
Published on February 28, 2011 by Pen Name
5.0 out of 5 stars
Stoked my excitement about programming
I think of myself as a Java aficionado, but it's been on my to-do list for years to learn more about functional programming languages. Read more
Published on November 9, 2010 by S. Scarano
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent book for beginning to learn Clojure.
This book is a very good guide about the Clojure programming language. It is not a reference, so, you need to complement this book with another resources like the official API, the... Read more
Published on May 18, 2010 by Jose Figueroa Martinez
5.0 out of 5 stars
Solid
I have three different categories for programming books I've read - those I don't need anymore, those that I want to keep but generally won't read again, and those that I want to... Read more
Published on May 5, 2010 by E. Price
5.0 out of 5 stars
Clojure - Language Elegance on the JVM
Clojure is the most elegant and effective language to cross my path in recent times. This book captures the essence of that elegance, while opening your eyes to the many defects... Read more
Published on March 23, 2010 by Kent Dorsey
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great place to start
You really need some programming experience to follow this book. Still, if you are new to functional programming and Clojure, this is a good place to start. Read more
Published on January 30, 2010 by Mr E
4.0 out of 5 stars
PragProg Redeemed
This book gave the right amount of detail for me, in about the right order, and I expect it to be a useful reference going forward. Read more
Published on January 8, 2010 by Jeffrey M. Schwab
5.0 out of 5 stars
A concise, thorough and enjoyable tour of Clojure
I've never read a programming book before that managed to cover all the major features of a language so concisely and clearly. Read more
Published on November 28, 2009 by J. Smith
5.0 out of 5 stars
Gently into functional programming with Stuart's "Programming Clojure"
It wasn't an easy task to grasp all the functional programming concepts outlined in the book "Programming Clojure", but I'm pretty certain that without Stuart Halloway's writing... Read more
Published on October 27, 2009 by Jacek Laskowski
5.0 out of 5 stars
Go Stu go!
Sorry, I'm sure few will read my review but I wanted to chime in anyways. I honestly ordered this book through Pragmatic Programmers site as PDF in beta having no clue what... Read more
Published on September 9, 2009 by Todd Crone
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