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Clojure for the Brave and True (2015)

braveclojure.com

81–90 of 106 posts

Re: Clojure for the Brave and True (2015)

#81
post #21

This was a good book. It would have been better if he had a more critical perspective of the language. As much as I love Rich Hickey and Clojure, the language does have pitfalls and rough edges, and this book was a little too starry-eyed to tackle them head-on like Crockford's book on JavaScript.

I agree. A sibling comment recommends "Joy of Clojure" but I feel that's better as a second or third book. My personal recommendation, YMMV as always, is Kyle Kingsbury's "Clojure from the Ground Up" series https://aphyr.com/tags/Clojure-from-the-ground-up , then "Clojure Applied", then "Joy of Clojure". Hard to say an ideal order for the last two -- "Clojure Applied" is more approachable IMO, but "Joy of Clojure" is…

is there any rhyme or reason to the order of the links on that page? the welcome post is bottom left.

Re: Clojure for the Brave and True (2015)

#82
post #5

Really appreciate the access to the book online http://www.braveclojure.com/clojure-for-the-brave-and-true/ more likely to buy products that you can see. This years challenge, learn two new languages. Clojure might be one of them. The reason? Lisp based and in spite of the fact it uses cough , Java (JVM), it runs on JavaScript. A better language to run/work with JavaScript. That is a good enough reason to learn and u…

I hear this a lot, but it totally mystifies me. You lose all the good parts of clojure when you go into the js runtime; stm, parallel processing, java interop, hot reloading, and it pulls in some really quite large js dependencies, and it's impossible to debug. Even console logging becomes a case of 'convert to readable object and log' using special helpers. What's the benefit? I don't see any meaningful reason to us…

also, here's a really good introduction to clojurescript with reagent: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wq6ctyZBb0A

Re: Clojure for the Brave and True (2015)

#83
I found the jokes and humor in Clojure for the Brave and True actually hilarious, to where I just read it now occasionally just to laugh a bit. I don't know why I like his humor and writing so much, but I suspect that it's the same way some people at a party will laugh at my jokes and some will not. It's all about finding your audience. The book (I did the online version) actually 'unstuck' me from where I had bogged down in learning Clojure. It's the humor that made it less intimidating a subject. I am deeply grateful to this book and it actually made a big difference in my life. My brain is wired for a book like this, and so I'm very, very glad he took the time to put it all together.

Re: Clojure for the Brave and True (2015)

#84
post #46

The entire second chapter is devoted to learning emacs. I find this to be a baffling editing decision. "Thanks for reading this book, but before we cover what you came for, let's do this other completely orthogonal thing first."

I think Clojure is so much better with emacs, and teaching working tooling is the key to teaching a language. That's because actually doing the coding is the key to understanding the language. Emacs is by far the best editor out there for this language. One of the trickiest aspects to picking up emacs is the emacs init files, which the author provided. I just think it's awesome that he takes you from zero to a working development environment and doesn't leave getting code running as an exercise for the reader (which would mean many wouldn't get it running).

Re: Clojure for the Brave and True (2015)

#85
post #26
post #25

I love Clojure, and have spent most of the last seven years in a Clojure REPL inside Emacs. But it still doesn't feel like critical mass has been reached. If anything, large efforts like Incanter have mostly died off, because most Clojure people are smart and resourceful enough to build their own stuff. There's an aversion to frameworks and a reliance on gluing together smaller libraries, which is totally valid as a…

Kind of reminds me of this: http://web.archive.org/web/20160304105922/http://www.lambdas... "Another feature about this guy is his low threshold of boredom. He'll pick up on a task and work frantically at it, accomplishing wonders in a short time and then get bored and drop it before its properly finished. He'll do nothing but strum his guitar and lie around in bed for several days after. That's also part of the patt…

I .. am reading this in my bed. I need to reflect.

Re: Clojure for the Brave and True (2015)

#86
post #26
post #25

I love Clojure, and have spent most of the last seven years in a Clojure REPL inside Emacs. But it still doesn't feel like critical mass has been reached. If anything, large efforts like Incanter have mostly died off, because most Clojure people are smart and resourceful enough to build their own stuff. There's an aversion to frameworks and a reliance on gluing together smaller libraries, which is totally valid as a…

Kind of reminds me of this: http://web.archive.org/web/20160304105922/http://www.lambdas... "Another feature about this guy is his low threshold of boredom. He'll pick up on a task and work frantically at it, accomplishing wonders in a short time and then get bored and drop it before its properly finished. He'll do nothing but strum his guitar and lie around in bed for several days after. That's also part of the patt…

[deleted]

Re: Clojure for the Brave and True (2015)

#87
post #81
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. A sibling comment recommends "Joy of Clojure" but I feel that's better as a second or third book. My personal recommendation, YMMV as always, is Kyle Kingsbury's "Clojure from the Ground Up" series https://aphyr.com/tags/Clojure-from-the-ground-up , then "Clojure Applied", then "Joy of Clojure". Hard to say an ideal order for the last two -- "Clojure Applied" is more approachable IMO, but "Joy of Clojure" is…

is there any rhyme or reason to the order of the links on that page? the welcome post is bottom left.

They're in chronological order unfortunately, so you need to start with the bottom left and work backwards.

Re: Clojure for the Brave and True (2015)

#88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure when your last exposure to the ClojureScript ecosystem was, but almost nothing you mention is a problem as of 2016: debugging, hot reloading, large JS deps, etc. I'm biased, but I think ClojureScript is the best way to use the JavaScript platform today. Awesome core library, consistent build process, best of breed tooling, persistent data structures, flexible syntax (JSX is madness compared to hiccups);…

Got a link with specifics? I've never seen breakpoints & source maps working properly; just a series of blog posts by various people who've tried and failed to get it working.

That's like 2 years ago. Source maps work fairly well today.

Re: Clojure for the Brave and True (2015)

#89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Got a link with specifics? I've never seen breakpoints & source maps working properly; just a series of blog posts by various people who've tried and failed to get it working.

That's like 2 years ago. Source maps work fairly well today.

come on, dont just wave your hands in the air and say its all good.

how do you do it then?

Re: Clojure for the Brave and True (2015)

#90
post #2

This is by far the best book around for learning Clojure from scratch (IMO). If you always wanted to learn Clojure but never had the time, 2017 is the right year, and Clojure for the Brave and True is your companion. Buy it, or just read it for free on the website. (Disclaimer: I'm not in any way associated to the book or the author, I'm just super thankful for all the times this book has helped me to learn new thing…

Agree! My team all uses Clojure/ClojureScript for product development, and this has repeatedly been hailed as the most inviting book for getting started.
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