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Clojure Distilled

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Re: Clojure Distilled

#21

Post by programnature »

verisimilidude wrote: post #10
arms wrote: post #9

I'm currently learning Clojure. For all the "aha!" moments, there are plenty of "WTFs?", too. Not that it's a fault of the language, it's just that it requires a different way of looking at things. I've only skimmed this article, but look forward to reading it in depth later. Thanks! I'd be interested if anyone has some similar pieces to share.

Most of my Clojure WTFs were not related to the language itself, but rather the tooling. This was years ago, but everyone used to say, "Before diving into Clojure, you should really learn emacs and all these other things first." I'm glad I ignored them and sputtered along in a text editor while learning the basics of the language, because I would've otherwise burnt out. With apps like Light Table now available, maybe…

Definitely recommend people try Cursive Clojure, the clojure Intellij plugin. Much easier to use/setup than emacs IMHO. Lots of clojure people have been switching.

Re: Clojure Distilled

#23

Post by craigching »

arms wrote: post #13
verisimilidude wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of my Clojure WTFs were not related to the language itself, but rather the tooling. This was years ago, but everyone used to say, "Before diving into Clojure, you should really learn emacs and all these other things first." I'm glad I ignored them and sputtered along in a text editor while learning the basics of the language, because I would've otherwise burnt out. With apps like Light Table now available, maybe…

Good to know! I started with emacs, but decided to use Light Table for now. Nothing against emacs, but I don't want to make things harder by learning a new language and a new editor at the same time. Aside from Light Table (and presumably Leiningen) do you have any other tooling recommendations?

I will say that cider has done a very nice job of getting interactive development using Emacs to work well. I am a 20+ year Emacs user and love working with Clojure via cider. I will say that I think getting started with Light Table is a great way to start, but don't leave Emacs too far behind!

Good luck go you!

Re: Clojure Distilled

#24

Post by erichmond »

fdsary wrote: post #17

I love clojure, and dream of the day I can work with it. But do you know why more people get into ruby or js? It's community is beginner friendly. Most texts on the subject of lisps feel like wannabe dissertations, preferably with the Computer Modern font and 5 pages long.

These links seem pretty beginner friendly to me.

http://tryclj.com/ http://www.braveclojure.com/ http://aphyr.com/posts/301-clojure-from-the-ground-up-welcom... http://clojurekoans.com/ http://www.4clojure.com/

Re: Clojure Distilled

#25

Post by oinksoft »

fdsary wrote: post #17

I love clojure, and dream of the day I can work with it. But do you know why more people get into ruby or js? It's community is beginner friendly. Most texts on the subject of lisps feel like wannabe dissertations, preferably with the Computer Modern font and 5 pages long.

I would never suggest a programmer learn Clojure as their first language, because of the enormous Java stacktraces. Then there's the setup involved (Java, usually Leiningen) to get to "Hello, World" compared to Python or Ruby. Just too many places where the student can get seriously stuck. Clojure's strengths (immutable structures, expression freedom, macros, Java interop, JVM) are not relevant to the new programmer.

Re: Clojure Distilled

#26

Post by serve_yay »

profil wrote: post #3

When using rawgit, please follow the owners request about using cdn.rawgit.com for anything that might result in heavy traffic. I guess links submitted to HN often results in heavy traffic. https://rawgit.com/faq#diff-between-rawgit-and-cdn

Would it really be so difficult to redirect my request...

Re: Clojure Distilled

#27

Post by tensor »

arms wrote: post #13
verisimilidude wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of my Clojure WTFs were not related to the language itself, but rather the tooling. This was years ago, but everyone used to say, "Before diving into Clojure, you should really learn emacs and all these other things first." I'm glad I ignored them and sputtered along in a text editor while learning the basics of the language, because I would've otherwise burnt out. With apps like Light Table now available, maybe…

Good to know! I started with emacs, but decided to use Light Table for now. Nothing against emacs, but I don't want to make things harder by learning a new language and a new editor at the same time. Aside from Light Table (and presumably Leiningen) do you have any other tooling recommendations?

I really like IntelliJ with cursive:

https://cursiveclojure.com/userguide/

Re: Clojure Distilled

#28

Post by mendort »

craigching wrote: post #23
arms wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good to know! I started with emacs, but decided to use Light Table for now. Nothing against emacs, but I don't want to make things harder by learning a new language and a new editor at the same time. Aside from Light Table (and presumably Leiningen) do you have any other tooling recommendations?

I will say that cider has done a very nice job of getting interactive development using Emacs to work well. I am a 20+ year Emacs user and love working with Clojure via cider. I will say that I think getting started with Light Table is a great way to start, but don't leave Emacs too far behind! Good luck go you!

I also am a long time emacs user, but whenever a plugin freezes emacs I immediately stop using it. Is is cider now stable? I know nrepl.el would crash emacs frequently if you asked it to evaluate the wrong thing.

Re: Clojure Distilled

#30

Post by dschiptsov »

I am really suggesting to try some classic Scheme course first, like my favorite CS61A by Brian Harvey, or that wonderful Racket-based course (what's the difference?) on Coursera by Gregor Kiczales (which is worth watching even if you are mere a brainwashed Java dev).

Another way is through pg's books, especially, of course, "On Lisp" and Arc tutorial and then arc.arc (original version from the 2009 arc3.tar which isn't cluttered with silly docstrings and other nonsense).

There is also the way of CL. For that there is pg's ANSI CL, but before that a much better "CL Language Concepts" from Symbolics (pdfs are available from bitsavers).

Then, perhaps, one will have slightly different view of what Clojure is really. Yes, it is a real marvel of software craftsmanship, especially that it was originally a solo effort, but no, there is no miracles in it.)

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