Getting to know Clojure

Before getting started with Clojure, you should know some of its features and what it shares with Java.

Clojure is a programming language that inherits a lot of characteristics from Lisp. You might think of Lisp as that weird programming language with all the parentheses. You need to keep in mind that Clojure chooses to embrace functional programming. This makes it very different from current mainstream programming languages. You will get to know about immutable data structures and how to write programs without changing variable values.

You will also find that Clojure is a dynamic programming language, which makes it a little easier and faster to write programs than using statically typed languages. There is also the concept of using a REPL, a tool that allows you to connect to a program running environment and change code dynamically. It is a very powerful tool.

At last, you will find out that you can convert Clojure to anything you like. You can create or use a statically typed system and bend the language to become what you like. A good example of this is the core.typed library, which allows you to specify the type information without adding support to the compiler.