Clojure for non-Lisp programmers

moxleystratton.com

36 points·martythemaniak··8 comments

That's great. Now, for the hacker-angle on the piece: How do I use this to do something useful in way that's smarter than how I'd do it in Python or Java?

And no, I don't consider an algorithm to calculate a Fibonacci sequence particularly useful.

Use agents (http://clojure.org/agents) and write an implementation of a ray tracer that uses many cores.

http://clojure.org/macros

there are plenty of additional articles out there that you can find easy enough that talk about the advantages of functional programming and immutable data.

That's a fairly old article, but I think it's a pretty good introduction to get your feet in Clojure wet if you don't have a Lisp background (at least, it was useful to me).

I also bought the Programming Clojure book from Pragprog last night. Would anyone be interested in a review? (once I read it)

Isn't it early for a review? http://www.pragprog.com/titles/shcloj/programming-clojure seems to indicate that the book is still "in beta".

Yes, it is in beta, but afaik it's also the only book about Clojure available and I could not find any meaningful discussions (or even synopses) about it before I bought.

Supposedly the final version is due in May anyways and I can always update my review since I'll get access to the final book for free once it's out.

Please do!

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