Clojure for the Brave and true
by Daniel Higginbotham · first published 2015
76% recommend17% neutral7% critical
Why HN recommends it
Engaging, free-to-read-online introduction to Clojure for newcomers starting from zero; covers the language, functional programming ideas, Java interop, and an Emacs setup, with exercises to work through.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
"Guide to the functional programming language Clojure. Teaches tools and techniques for writing programs in Clojure. Covers how to wield and compose Clojure's core functions; use Emacs for Clojure development; write macros to modify the Clojure programming language; and use Clojure's tools to simplify concurrency and parallel programming"--
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Clojure for the Brave and True by Daniel Higginbotham is a wonderful intro into the entire ecosystem (Leiningen, Clojure/lisps in general, Java interop, emacs, etc.). If you're already experienced with Lisps, you could probably start…
on “Problem Solving and Clojure 1.9 with Rich Hickey” ↗Getting Clojure (Russ Olsen), Clojure for the Brave and True (Daniel Higginbotham), Living Clojure (Carin Meier), and Programming Clojure (me, Stuart Halloway, Aaron Bedra) are the best intro books, in my opinion.
on “Problem Solving and Clojure 1.9 with Rich Hickey” ↗"Clojure For The Brave and True" is also another book who's author explicitly chose their publisher (No Starch) because they could also publish the book for free on their website. Not only is it free but also amazing book, one of the most enjoyable books I've read about programming overall and also made me dive into the Clojure rabbit hole that I'm now lucky to work professionally with during my d
on “Why my book can be downloaded for free (2014)” ↗I found that learning and writing some Clojure and Go made me think better about the code I was writing in my main language (python). I enjoyed working through Clojure for the brave and true: https://www.braveclojure.com/clojure-for-the-brave-and-true/ and the go tour is probably the best introduction I've ever had to a language: https://tour.golang.org/welcome/1
on “Ask HN: Self-taught webdev with lots of free time. What should I learn?” ↗I have to disagree that macOS has a good GUI. I have used Ubuntu with KDE Plasma (Ubuntu) extensively in the past, but when I started a new job a year ago I was supplied a 2019 MBP. This year has been my first Mac experience. I find a lot of things annoying. I'm mostly used to it now and don't mind the day to day experience, but it was jarring and I know it's not ideal. * If I want to maximize a
on “Ask HN: What Lived Up to the Hype?” ↗Well, Java Concurrency in Practice certainly isn't low quality but it is boring and outdated. An alternative would be Clojure For the Brave And True :)
on “Recommended Reading List for Developers [pdf]” ↗[context: I work at Cognitect on Clojure and community efforts] I'll start by saying that documentation, examples, getting started, etc could be better and efforts are ongoing to improve all of those to various degrees. However, there are substantial and rapidly growing resources (http://clojure.org/getting_started) for learning Clojure and other parts of the ecosystem. Some of the more recent b
on “Trapperkeeper is a new Clojure framework for long-running applications, services” ↗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…
on “Clojure for the Brave and True (2015)” ↗…for getting a feel for things. Pick one according to your tastes, or burn through them all in a couple weekends and then decide. If "functional programming for the enterprise" sounds good to you, read Clojure for the Brave and True. If you're more interested in a truly mature language with a more academic community, read Land of Lisp. If you're looking for a simple language that's easy to learn, or if metaprogramming is really…
on “Ask HN: I want to start learning Lisp. Where do I begin?” ↗I like Clojure for the Brave and True [1], although it can be a little goofy at times. Leiningen [2] is the standard build tool, and Clojars is the standard package repository [3]. For web development, Ring [4] is the standard HTTP solution, while Compojure [5] is generally used for routing. http://www.clojure-toolbox.com is good for everything else. [1]: http://www.braveclojure.com [2]: http
on “Show HN: OJ – A Clojure library for talking to your database” ↗Clojure For the Brave and True includes an excellent clojure setup for emacs[0] [0] https://www.braveclojure.com/basic-emacs/
on “Portacle – A Portable Common Lisp Development Environment” ↗Racket is nice, as it's very "batteries-included", you get a nice IDE in DrRacket plus a fairly complete standard library. I feel like most people seem to gravitate towards Clojure afterwards for "real" projects - it definitely has the most real world adoption. The Java interop and JVM runtime feel like simultaneously Clojure's biggest strength and biggest weakness. Here are some resources for b
on “Ask HN: What is the best way to learn Lisp in 2020?” ↗Hear hear! I've written about this (free online) book here on HN before but it really gave me the kick I needed (and lightweight humor) to actually start using Clojure(Script) professionally, so if you're on the edge, give "Clojure for the Brave and True" a try! https://www.braveclojure.com/clojure-for-the-brave-and-true/ > The lessons are carefully thought out and unique. From learning asynchr
on “Clojure as a dependency” ↗…whose original developers are all long gone. I'm finding the experience to be a bit like trying to learn how to navigate a city where none of the streets have names. When I was working my way through Clojure for the Brave and True, I really liked all the clever techniques around data-level programming and informal interfaces. Not having to stop to define and name formal types lets you slap things together quickly. But I'm now seeing…
on “The Future of Clojure” ↗I'm about a third of the way into Clojure for the Brave and True. Highly recommend for starting out from zero. You can read it for free at https://www.braveclojure.com/clojure-for-the-brave-and-true/
on “ClojureDocs – Community-powered documentation and examples for Clojure” ↗