Clojure in Action

12/19/2011 · No Responses

Clojure in Action is a hands-on tutorial for the working programmer who has written code in a language like Java or Ruby, but has no prior experience with Lisp. It teaches Clojure from the basics to advanced topics using practical, real-world application examples. Blow through the theory and dive into practical matters like unit-testing and environment set-up, all the way through building a scalable web-application using domain-specific languages, Hadoop, HBase, and RabbitMQ.

Clojure is a modern Lisp for the JVM, and it has the strengths you’d expect: first-class functions, macros, support for functional programming, and a Lisp-like, clean programming style.

Clojure in Action is a practical guide focused on applying Clojure to practical programming challenges. You’ll start with a language tutorial written for readers who already know OOP. Then, you’ll dive into the use cases where Clojure really shines: state management, safe concurrency and multicore programming, first-class code generation, and Java interop. In each chapter, you’ll first explore the unique characteristics of a problem area and then discover how to tackle them using Clojure. Along the way, you’ll explore practical matters like architecture, unit testing, and set-up as you build a scalable web application that includes custom DSLs, Hadoop, HBase, and RabbitMQ.

What’s Inside

A fast-paced Clojure tutorial
Creating web services with Clojure
Scaling through messaging
Creating DSLs with Clojure’s macro system
Test-driven development with Clojure
Distributed programming with Clojure, and more

This book assumes you’re familiar with an OO language like Java, C#, or C++ but requires no background in Lisp or Clojure itself.

Table of Contents
Part 1: Getting started
Chapter 1. Introduction to Clojure
Chapter 2. A whirlwind tour
Chapter 3. Building blocks of Clojure
Chapter 4. Polymorphism with multimethods
Chapter 5. Clojure and Java interop
Chapter 6. State and the concurrent world
Chapter 7. Evolving Clojure through macros

Part 2: Getting real
Chapter 8. Test-driven development and more
Chapter 9. Data storage with Clojure
Chapter 10. Clojure and the web
Chapter 11. Scaling through messaging
Chapter 12. Data processing with Clojure
Chapter 13. More on functional programming
Chapter 14. Protocols, records, and types
Chapter 15. More macros and DSLs