Ben Mabey

Clojure, Plain and Simple

by Ben Mabey on Aug 16, 2013 Edit

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This introduction to Clojure was given to the Utah Java Users Group Aug. 15. It's main focus was on Clojure's time model and how the design of Clojure separates (decomplects) many concepts which are all implemented on top of Objects in Java, and other OO languages. This is the abstract for the original talk:

Tony Hoare famously said "There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult." Clojure is a functional Lisp that targets, among other platforms, the JVM and strives to enable the former approach to building software.

In its pursuit of simplicity Clojure encourages the use of pure functions, sequence abstractions which allow for lazy and parallel processing of data, persistent (immutable) data structures, and a novel way of dealing with state as a succession of values. While these concepts may sound intimidating for those unfamiliar with functional programming, they are actually less complicated than many programming constructs that programmers use everyday.

This talk will cover these concepts and the motivation behind them. You will learn the basics of Clojure programming and will be given a taste of what developing an application in Clojure is like.