Preface

In the last few years, we have seen a widespread tendency to create new languages for JVM. There are all sorts of new languages with different paradigms and different ways of working.

Clojure is one of those languages, one that we believe is worth learning.

Over the course of this book, you will learn about Clojure and how opinionated it is. You will learn why immutable objects are not only possible, but it is a good idea to use them.

You will learn about functional programming and see how it fits the concept of immutable programs.

You will understand the very powerful idea of representing your code as a data structure of the same language.

It is important to note that we will build all this knowledge on top of what you already know; this book assumes that you understand the Java language and a bit of how it works. It assumes that you understand how to create classes and objects, how to call methods, and also a bit about the JVM. We will find similarities and differences from the Java language that you already know, so you can understand how the Clojure world works.

It is said that a great programmer is not the one who knows a lot of different programming languages, it is someone who knows different programming paradigms.

Clojure brings ideas from Lisp and functional programming, which are different to what you are used to. This book will help you understand the power behind these ideas and why a language so old still exists and has a place.

Learning Lisp is one of the great pleasures of life, I hope you enjoy it!