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Clojure Programming
- gcv 15y agoIIRC, O'Reilly was flat-out refusing to publish any Lisp books as recently as 2005. How things have changed. :)
- cemerick 15y agoLast I looked, their author proposal FAQ still has that exclusion. FYI, a Common Lisp book nearly made it out of the gate a couple of years ago, Nick Levine's 'Lisp Out of the Box'. The contents of it are available under a Creative Commons license: http://lisp-book.org/ http://lisp-book.org/
- chadzawistowski 15y agoLooks like that exclusion is still there: http://oreilly.com/oreilly/author/writeforus_1101.html http://oreilly.com/oreilly/author/writeforus_1101.html It seems to be a strong recommendation rather than a hard rule, though. Clojure is worthy of an exception in my opinion.
- nonrecursive 15y agoThanks for this! I took a look at the home page and have bookmarked the page. I've been dabbling in Lisp (read Land of Lisp and am going through PCL) and eventually I'd like to create my own text-based game using common lisp. However, I am indeed wondering if/how it would make sense to use it at work. I mostly do full stack web stuff (ruby/sinatra/rails, javascript) and I'm not at all sure where Lisp would fit in. In fact, I don't really know what it brings to the table except its expressiveness. As opposed to e.g. python, java, c, or objective-c where I have a decent idea of the domains where they shine.
- cemerick 15y agoI think you'll find Clojure to be superb in the web space. I've never been a ruby guy, but I did spend a lot of time with python in web dev, and Clojure compares very, very well IMO. In short, all the creature comforts of ruby/python + an efficient runtime + an unbeatable selection of libraries.
- nonrecursive 15y agoThanks! This and the other comments in the thread are definitely motivating me to check out clojure. My dream of the moment is to make my command-line text-based game playable through a web front end and deployed to heroku using the clojure buildpack. I think that will give me at least, like, 5 geek points.
- cemerick 15y agoI actually wasn't aware of the 'clojure buildpack' until you mentioned it. All I've ever done to put Clojure/Ring apps on Heroku is add a one-line Procfile to my Leiningen project, and `git push heroku`. :-)
- nonrecursive 15y agoJust curious, does anyone know why O'Reilly would refuse to publish any Lisp books?
- cpach 15y agoI guess they didn't consider the market for Lisp books very profitable: »We're NOT looking for: (...) Books on topics that have dismal sales despite quality books being available. (If you're addressing a topic where good books have sold dismally in the past (for instance, LISP, LaTeX, or Web-based training), you have a much higher threshold to clear with your proposal. Convince us why there is a revival of interest in your topic, or why your approach to a deadly topic will provoke interest nonetheless.)« (from http://oreilly.com/oreilly/author/writeforus_1101.html http://oreilly.com/oreilly/author/writeforus_1101.html) However, in 2009 an O'Reilly editor wrote: »I think there's reason to believe that's changing, particularly with the right book; LISP awareness has been growing for the past couple of years. Our Haskell book has outsold expectations; Erlang has obviously made a comeback; so there has been a relatively recent shift in the language map.« (from http://lisp-book.org/talks/eclm-2011-10-23/plan.txt http://lisp-book.org/talks/eclm-2011-10-23/plan.txt)
- lispm 15y agoBecause it takes some effort to write a good Lisp book. There are several very good books: SICP, PAIP, AMOP, On Lisp, PCL, LoL, ... Also typical Lisp hacker won't buy a slightly edited and printed version of the HyperSpec or a printed version of the SBCL manual. Add to that that Lisp made a deep dive after the AI winter and that they were sure to not sell enough copies. At that time it was also a good idea not to be connected to Lisp. Plus, I guess they did not like Lisp. 'Clojure' has the 'advantage' not to use 'Lisp' in its name.
- CJefferson 15y agoI suspect the answer is more simple than you make out. They will not publish what they are sure will not sell.
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- buckwild 15y agoDoes anyone know of a good web framework for Clojure? Perhaps a rails of django equivalent? I love using Java for the exact reason the author claims Clojure is so powerful--the magnitude of libraries. If a decent web framework is available, then I would be inclined to give it a go.
- steele 15y agohttp://webnoir.org/ http://webnoir.org/
- francoisdevlin 15y agoThere's Noir, which is more minimalistic that Rails, but it's easier to customize as a result. I've had some fun playing around with it, but I personally haven't used it in production yet. webnoir.org
- choffstein 15y agoThis is probably the best overview out there: http://brehaut.net/blog/2011/ring_introduction http://brehaut.net/blog/2011/ring_introduction, though it doesn't mention the new kid on the block, Noir (http://www.webnoir.org/ http://www.webnoir.org/)
- lukev 15y agoThere's some (none so mature as django or Rails)... take a look at Noir (http://webnoir.org/ http://webnoir.org/) However, the Clojure philosophy seems to be trending towards building your own composition of highly composable micro-libraries, rather than being handed one monolithic framework. It works very well, but does have the side effect that there isn't real "one stop shop" for beginners. And when you're designing a webapp (or any app) in Clojure, you'll notice that you have a much higher degree of freedom regarding how to do things. There's no "one true way" the way there is with Rails. Again, this is extremely powerful, but it makes the next step somewhat less obvious for beginners.
- cemerick 15y agoNearly everything web in Clojure is built on Ring. I personally like using Compojure (which bundles together clout for routing and a bunch of good defaults for sites or web services) and Enlive (for templating). This is the stack we describe in depth in the web portion of the book. Frameworks are largely not used, at least in the monolithic, un-composable way that 'frameworks' generally are in other languages. This is what makes it so easy for alternative conceptualizations of the problem to come about (i.e. Noir, which also uses Ring and Compojure, but with different defaults, some macro sugar, and hiccup for templating), and themselves to be mixed/integrated with other web codebases. For example, you can trivially compose a noir application with a couple of "low level" Ring handlers with another app written using Moustache and stringtemplate. That is all to say, yes, you'll find all the pieces you need for web development.
- MatthewPhillips 15y agoI'd still love to see a ClojureScript book that doesn't assume you already know Clojure. Put me in a repl and have me modifying a web-page, as opposed to writing command-line applications.
- dinedal 15y agoI think you're looking for this: http://clojurescriptone.com/ http://clojurescriptone.com/
- buddy_nuggs 15y agoI have been interested in learning Clojure for some time (spent many years as a Java dev, and intrigued by the chance to develop again on the JVM and learn a Lisp style language). This is a resource I have bookmarked as potentially helpful when I get around to learning: http://blackstag.com/blog.posting?id=5 http://blackstag.com/blog.posting?id=5 I haven't had the chance to check it out yet so can't vouch for quality. But it seemed that a few people on the thread are considering getting into Clojure, so I thought I'd share.
- siavosh 15y agoThanks for sharing. I've recently dived in too, here's some resources I'm using: https://github.com/functional-koans/clojure-koans https://github.com/functional-koans/clojure-koans http://www.4clojure.com/ http://www.4clojure.com/ http://www.amazon.com/Joy-Clojure-Thinking-Way/dp/1935182641/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1330382665&sr=8-1 http://www.amazon.com/Joy-Clojure-Thinking-Way/dp/1935182641...
- krosaen 15y agoAnyone have insight into how this might complement / compare with "The Joy of Clojure" http://joyofclojure.com/the-book http://joyofclojure.com/the-book? At first glance, having read JOC and seeing the TOC for this new book, what most piques my interest are the sections on macros, protocols, and the web stuff.
- elangoc 15y agoI imagine that Clojure Programming is going to be similar to Programming Clojure, when compared to the others (for a better rundown of others books: http://stackoverflow.com/a/2928998 http://stackoverflow.com/a/2928998) Or as this answer from SO puts it, Clojure Programming probably teaches the "what" of Clojure: http://stackoverflow.com/a/2579877 http://stackoverflow.com/a/2579877 Personally, I think Joy of Clojure is the "why" as well as "how to do it well". I learned the "what" mostly from Practical Clojure, which was good enough, but definitely not great. Programming Clojure (2nd ed. for clj v 1.3, still in progress) seems organized like a conversation in chapters, i.e., you'd have to read it entirely sequentially, and targeted random-access might be difficult for first-time learners. I don't how Clojure Programming will be, but I hope it raises the bar for teaching newbies.
- malandrew 15y agoNow that you've written a full technical book, what are your thoughts about how technical book publishing is done and how it can both better serve the authors creating the content and be better presented to your readers?
- SonicSoul 15y agois anyone putting Clojure to good use? i've been reading about it for a while, but still can't find a practical use for it. i know .Net framework in and out, and it just makes everything so easy.. not sure what Clojure could offer me at this stage, even though i love its notation (the little that i know so far).
- moomin 15y agoThe truth is, if you're a .NET programmer, you're going to find Clojure slightly painful because you're switching ecosystems. Using it for work will encounter the same problem and ClojureCLR is a second class citizen. That's not to say it isn't great and useful, it is. I'm noticing a couple of trends in Clojure development: big data and esoteric. Take a look at Storm (twitter's data processing engine) and Overtone.
- blario 15y agoWhy Clojure? What makes it better than anything from the huge range of choice developers already have?
- moomin 15y agoVery quickly: Simplicity, Speed, Power. Simplicity: it's easier to reason about a Clojure program. Speed: Idiomatic Clojure tends to be as fast as Java when it matters. Power: If an abstraction you need isn't present, you can write your own. Code reuse is insanely high.