The meteoric rise of Clojure seems strangely out of context. It is one of the best functional programming languages you can learn and be only published in 2007.
For such young language, he quickly gained steam. The community is great and steady growth, not to mention that learning resources do not slow down anytime soon. Many professional make this language their stream of income by post freelance jobs free and offer it as freelancer.
In this post, I’ll share a handful of my favorite Clojure introductory material books for advanced topics. This is not an exhaustive list of all Clojure books, but it is a list of the best that you can get in a variety of themes and writing styles.
Best book for beginners
If I had to make a suggestion for beginners, I would recommend Clojure to the brave and True. The writing style is fun and super easy to follow regardless of your background. It’s also close enough to take it to the ground, running with Clojure programming. Many freelance websites offer this programming language to users.
Clojure for the brave and True
This is actually one of the most recent Clojure books and is considered a very high-quality source of information. You learn from a professional developer Daniel Higginbotham, who has a notation that takes you straight to the language.
Clojure for the brave and True is marketed as a product that will help you become a better programmer. It starts writing code and brings it to a real Clojure application. This may seem intimidating, but the writing style makes it very good for beginners.
You do not need previous experience with Clojure or functional programming, to get this book. He seems to be moving fast, but when you get back in teaching, you’ll catch the little subtleties quickly.
All examples are fun and very exciting. This is the beginning starter guide for Clojure and once you’re done, it will leave you thirsty for more. Learn Clojure on freelancer post freelance jobs free on freelance websites.
Clojure in Action book
I cannot rave enough about the quality of this book. The authors do an incredible job of explaining functional programming and concurrent programming, starting with theory and dealing quickly with practical examples.
Manning published Clojure in Action, which makes it the ideal choice because you can get a free copy of the book with every purchase. I’ve always found the quality of Manning to be excellent compared to all the other major programming publishers.
Macros, protocols and test-driven development are all affected on this page.
You can take this as a beginner, but it can be surprisingly difficult. It sure helps to have a little programming knowledge to help you relate to those issues. But I think it’s possible to learn Clojure from this book without any previous experience if you give yourself enough time to work with the content.
Clojure programming
A handful of talented writers have contributed to Clojure programming and are one of the best books to start with. The writing style is easy to follow and compare many of the Clojure examples with other programming/scripting languages.
Each chapter goes into excruciating detail about Clojure with small sections that break away to answer your common questions. Footnotes are used in conjunction with explanatory texts to explain snippets of code that otherwise appear confusing or detailing.
The first few chapters introduce you to functional programming, which is a difficult question for themselves.
As you go, the Clojure language should be simple and make a lot more sense. They learn common tools and workflows to help you adapt to the process that makes it easier and more fun.
Everything is arranged in a linear line, where the read one chapter after another. But you can skip and still keep up with the material when you enjoy your attacks.
Definitely, a great book recommended for beginners and especially for programmers who already have experience in scripting/coding in other procedural languages.
Clojure Life
For a brief but detailed introduction to functional programming check out Clojure Be. The author Carin Meier wasted no time getting the details and pushing him along the Clojure track learning.
In the first section, learn about the basics of Clojure, including syntax and design patterns. The second half includes detailed examples, tutorials, and guidelines for creating real Clojure applications.
This is meant for beginners but not as user-friendly as other books mentioned in this post. I think developers will really enjoy Clojure life if they already have experience and want to pick up a functional programming language.
Once the writing style is tight, you can work through a few pages before needing to look up a few sentences. But at 240 pages the content is tight and the price range is good for a beginner guide to Clojure programming.
Clojure programming
The best thing about this book is your writing style. All information here can be found in other books. However, it cannot be said as clearly or as short as you think.
Programming Clojure makes learning this fun and enticing language. The writing style is not too tight or too complicated, although the technical language is a big part of the book.
You can do this with experience in Lisp or Java pick up, but you do not need to have any previous experience. In fact, you can choose this as a complete beginner and prevail with patience. Beginner can hire people from freelance websites to put them through also.
But I also feel a part of this book is pretty “cute” with overly detailed writing styles and code examples. It’s not a bad book. However, seasoned programmers may feel that this is a very easy introduction.
The Joy of Clojure
Here is another Manning Publishing book currently in the 2nd edition. However, this takes place where the previous book Clojure has stopped in action to take a competent/advanced novice and give them more complicated tasks.
The joy of Clojure begins with a philosophy behind language and functional programming. But it moves quickly in macros and the more technical concepts behind Clojure programming. The author has even touched ClojureScript which is a pleasant surprise (not related).
Everything in this book is dense and comprehensive. It is made for programmers who already have experience in functional programming or some previous experience with Clojure.
What you get is a lot more detail on the key issues like concurrency and parallelism in Clojure application development. The text is very difficult and full of technical jargon is the fear of beginners. But if you are prepared for an advanced book, Joy of Clojure is an excellent choice.
Web Development with Clojure
I admit that Clojure for web development is not the most popular topic. But since the language is gaining momentum that is something to discuss and study when you have the time.
Web development with Clojure by Dmitri Sotnikov is a 250-page book that was first released in the summer of 2016 It is definitely a current guide to the power of Clojure and how it can be used for extremely fast websites or ZPE.
The author talks about Clojure in a Web workflow with many popular libraries, frameworks and third party tools such as Compojure. And while you will not be expected to understand what one of these tools does, you should understand how Clojure works and at least some programming basics.
I do not think typical web developers simply pick up this book and could go to town. You need some knowledge of functional programming because Clojure on the Internet is very complicated.
However, I think Dmitry did a great job of breaking the subject and he is definitely a respectable author.
Conclusion
However, it is my vote for the # 1 best Clojure cookbook and it will prove invaluable to advanced programmers who want a Clojure Design Desk Reference.
There is no quick fix to mastering Clojure at all. Just like all the programming languages, you need at work and time, ideally, come from the other side a much better developer.
If you are new to functional programming, I would recommend getting started with Clojure for the Brave and True because it is affordable and easy to read. Developers who already have some knowledge of functional programming can go with Clojure in action because it is a little detail in its place.
There is no shortage of Clojure books and I do not see that this language is losing popularity anytime soon. There are more than enough features on this list for you on the right track to building powerful Clojure applications from scratch. You just have to find the things that work best for you and you will you!