Joy of Clojure – In the Books | Hacker News Reader

Joy of Clojure – In the Books

blog.fogus.me

64 pointsmattyb24 comments

I was commenting to my wife the other day that while JoC does not seem to be written for complete beginners, that fact is actually a very good thing. There is a lot of Beginning Clojure / Beginning Lisp / etc. material out there. What I really wanted was a book for those who have already seen the light, so to speak, of Lisp. I've read The Little Lisper. I've read Lisp 1.5 Manual. I've written a Lisp interpreter in C. And so on. I'll use Lisp as long as I am still allowed to do so (I'm a grad student, so no issues yet!).

So I love Lisp and I love Clojure for being a new Lisp.

JoC talks directly to me. It references works and people I know about, but most of which I do not know enough about. It talks about how amazing Lisp is but tells me even more than I already knew. Much more. It's written as if the authors are saying, "Yes of course Lisp and Clojure are great, but here are all the reasons WHY." For example, the section "nil Pun With Care" is obviously written for someone who knows the variations on 'nil' found in different Lisps. JoC's style is similar to Rich Hickey's famous presentations ("Yes, nil is different in Clojure... ok, let's just get through this slide, you knew we'd have to at some point...").

JoC really takes Lisp appreciation to the next level. I was waiting for something like this!

If you can't possibly wait for the book until November, you can get a beta version of the ebook at http://www.manning.com/fogus/ for $28. Highly recommended.

I just bought the MEAP ebook and the print book, using the InfoQ 35% discount, for just $7 more. Highly recommended.

fogus, I'm not sure how these things work. If the discount affects your royalties, say so and I'll delete this comment.

If you follow him on twitter, it's not uncommon for he and his coauthor @chrishouser to mention the sales, so I think they're ok with buying it discounted :)

Not at all -- the more people that read it the better. I'm not getting rich either way. ;-)

I think the InfoQ code is infoq35 if anyone else wants to use it.

Do you have any plans for discounts etc. for current purchasers if/when you release any new editions?

Any idea if this book will be in mobi format? Manning support for kindle has been pretty poor so far.

I converted the PDF to .mobi myself and it reads pretty well modulo images and code samples.

Michael: I have been enjoying the MEAP while you have been writing it. My enthusiasm for Clojure is increasing and I like the book!

BTW, really off topic, but do you have any advice for making stack traces a little more useful (using Clojure 1.2)? This is still a sore spot for me.

Have you tried the functions in the clojure.stacktrace namespace? They are limited, but might get you some of what you want.

I have tried that, and it is not really what I want. I believe that solving the stacktrace problem is a big job for the Clojure dev team, so patience is in order. That said, in doing Clojure development, this is the only thing that really bugs me.

The clj-stacktrace third-party lib does a much better job of this. I have hopes that it can be merged into Clojure in the future. (Not in 1.2 though; it's already in RC-stage.)

Thanks Philip, that is good to know. Clojure is awesome, but it does still have some rough spots. BTW, I looked at your resume: you are a major contributor to open source projects (you have worked on 13 projects that I use), and I am not, so I should stop complaining if things are not yet just the way I like them :-)

After trying clj-stacktrace for a long while, I agree, this would be good to merge into Clojure.

Now to begin the speculation on who the mystery author of the foreward is. Any guesses? I am putting my money on John McCarthy.

I am between him and pg.

edit: I never imagined John McCarthy writing fiction... http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/robotandbaby/robotandbaby...

My money's on Yegge:

"I used to have lot of open, long-standing concerns about the future of programming and productivity, but my sabbatical last year finally brought me some clojure."

http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2010/07/blogger-finger.html

Oh in that case, I'd buy the book just for the foreword.

In that case maybe the foreword is half of the book.

Martin Odersky?

http://blog.fogus.me/2010/08/06/martinodersky-take5-tolist/

(credit to dpritchett: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1581486 )

Would this be a good book to jump into Clojure with?

I read through the preview chapter. I like the flow of it. I will definitely get it when it prints.

If you have previous experience with Lisp . Then probably yes. The book seems to assume familiarity with clojure already .

First thing to do: Put source code on the webpage. That is the primary thing to do.

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