Clojure is a dialect of the Lisp programming language. It’s a well-rounded language. It offers broad library support and runs on multiple operating systems.
Clojure is a dynamic functional general purpose programming language that runs on the Java platform, combining the approachability and interactive development of a scripting language with an efficient and robust infrastructure for multi-threaded programming. Clojure features a rich set of immutable, persistent data structures, first-class functions and dynamic typing. Clojure programs are composed of expressions and written in terms of abstractions.
By compiling into JVM bytecode, Clojure applications can be easily packaged and deployed to JVMs and application servers without added complexity. The language also provides macros which make it simple to use existing Java APIs. Clojure’s data structures all implement standard Java Interfaces, making it easy to run code implemented in Clojure from Java.
There’s lots of other good reasons to learn Clojure. It offers a modern take on Lisp. There’s an excellent parser library, and a fully featured logic engine. In Clojure, immutability is the default. Once an object or data structure is created, it cannot be changed. There are no variables.
Clojure currently ranks 61th in the TIOBE Index.
Here’s our recommended tutorials to learn Clojure. If you’re looking for free Clojure programming books, check here.
1. Clojure – Functional Programming for the JVM by R. Mark Volkmann
The goal of this article is to provide a fairly comprehensive introduction to the Clojure programming language. A large number of features are covered, each in a fairly brief manner.
2. Clojure By Example by kim hirokuni
This site aims to help you learn functional programming and start to write Clojure!
3. Clojure 1.10 Cheat Sheet by Steve Tayon
A useful cheat sheet. It’s the official cheat sheet.
There’s alternative cheat sheets available here.
4. Clojure Documentation by Clojure Documentation Team
The community-driven documentation site for the Clojure programming language.
5. Clojure Distilled by Dmitri Sotnikov
The goal of this guide is to provide an overview of the core concepts necessary to become productive with Clojure.
6. Clojure Koans by Colin Jones and many contributors
Clojure koans are exercises meant to initiate you to the mysteries of the Clojure language. By following along the path set before you, you will touch on all the major aspects of the language, from simple datatypes to macros, from tail recursion to Java interoperability.
7. Data Sorcery with Clojure by David Edgar Liebke
This blog focuses on statistical programming in the Clojure language using Incanter.
8. SICP Distilled by Tom Hall
An idiosyncratic tour of SICP in Clojure.
9. The Clojure Style Guide by many contributors
The Clojure Style Guide is a community coding style guide for the Clojure programming language.
10. A Clojure Newbie Guide by Kiran Gangadharan
This is a quick guide to Clojure and its ecosystem for newbies.
All tutorials in this series:
| Free Programming Tutorials | |
|---|---|
| Java | General-purpose, concurrent, class-based, object-oriented, high-level language |
| C | General-purpose, procedural, portable, high-level language |
| Python | General-purpose, structured, powerful language |
| C++ | General-purpose, portable, free-form, multi-paradigm language |
| C# | Combines the power and flexibility of C++ with the simplicity of Visual Basic |
| JavaScript | Interpreted, prototype-based, scripting language |
| PHP | PHP has been at the helm of the web for many years |
| Ruby | General purpose, scripting, structured, flexible, fully object-oriented language |
| Assembly | As close to writing machine code without writing in pure hexadecimal |
| Swift | Powerful and intuitive general-purpose programming language |
| Groovy | Powerful, optionally typed and dynamic language |
| Go | Compiled, statically typed programming language |
| Pascal | Imperative and procedural language designed in the late 1960s |
| Perl | High-level, general-purpose, interpreted, scripting, dynamic language |
| R | De facto standard among statisticians and data analysts |
| COBOL | Common Business-Oriented Language |
| Scala | Modern, object-functional, multi-paradigm, Java-based language |
| Fortran | The first high-level language, using the first compiler |
| Scratch | Visual programming language designed for 8-16 year-old children |
| Lua | Designed as an embeddable scripting language |
| Logo | Dialect of Lisp that features interactivity, modularity, extensibility |
| Rust | Ideal for systems, embedded, and other performance critical code |
| Lisp | Unique features - excellent to study programming constructs |
| Ada | ALGOL-like programming language, extended from Pascal and others |
| Haskell | Standardized, general-purpose, polymorphically, statically typed language |
| Scheme | General-purpose, functional, language descended from Lisp and Algol |
| Prolog | General purpose, declarative, logic programming language |
| Forth | Imperative stack-based programming language |
| Clojure | Dialect of the Lisp programming language |
| Julia | High-level, high-performance language for technical computing |
| SQL | Access and manipulate data held in a relational database management system |
| Erlang | General-purpose, concurrent, declarative, functional language |
| VimL | Powerful scripting language of the Vim editor |
| OCaml | General-purpose, powerful, high-level language |
| Awk | Versatile language designed for pattern scanning and processing |
| Racket | Platform for programming language design and implementation |
| BASIC | Family of general-purpose, high-level programming languages |
| CoffeeScript | A very succinct programming language that transcompiles into JavaScript |
| LaTeX | Professional document preparation system and document markup language |
| Elixir | Relatively new functional language that runs on the Erlang virtual machine |
| Dart | Client-optimized programming language for fast apps |
| ABAP | Advanced Business Application Programming |
| F# | General purpose, strongly typed, multi-paradigm language. Part of ML |
| Chapel | Parallel-programming language in development at Cray Inc. |
| Dylan | Multi-paradigm language, supports functional & object-oriented programming |
| D | General-purpose systems programming language with a C-like syntax |
| Solidity | Object-oriented, high-level language for implementing smart contracts |
| XML | Set of rules for defining semantic tags that describe the structure and meaning |
| Vala | Object-oriented language with a self-hosting compiler that generates C code |
| ECMAScript | Best known as the language embedded in web browsers |
| Kotlin | Statically typed, general-purpose programming language with type inference |
| TypeScript | Strict syntactical superset of JavaScript, adding optional static typing |
| Markdown | Plain text formatting syntax designed to be easy-to-read and easy-to-write |
| Pike | Interpreted, general-purpose, high-level, cross-platform, dynamic language |
| HTML | HyperText Markup Language |
| Factor | Dynamic stack-based language |
| Objective-C | General purpose language which is a superset of C |
| Standard ML | One of the two main dialects of the ML language |
| Alice | Educational language with an integrated development environment |
| Agda | Dependently typed functional language based on intuitionistic type theory |
| Icon | High-level, general-purpose language |
| PureScript | Small strongly, statically typed language with expressive types |
| Tcl | Dynamic language based on concepts of Lisp, C, and Unix shells |
| Eiffel | Object-oriented language |
| ClojureScript | Compiler for Clojure that targets JavaScript |
| QML | Hierarchical declarative language for user interface layout with a syntax to JSON |
| VHDL | Very High Speed Integrated Circuit Hardware Description Language |
| OpenCL | Open Computing Language |
| Elm | Functional language that compiles to JavaScript |
| Haml | HTML Abstraction Markup Language |
| J | Array programming language based primarily on APL |
| LabVIEW | Designed to enable domain experts to build power systems quickly |
| Hack | For the HipHop Virtual Machine (HHVM), created as a dialect of PHP |
| Imba | Full-stack language that compiles to performant JavaScript |
| V | Statically typed compiled language to build maintainable software |
| PostScript | Page description language in electronic and desktop publishing |
| Arduino | Inexpensive, flexible, open source microcontroller platform |
| Nim | Statically typed compiled systems language with syntax resembling Python |
| Emacs Lisp | A dialect of the Lisp programming language. |
| Octave | High-level language, primarily intended for numerical computations |
| Bash | ‘Bourne-Again-SHell’ is both a shell and programming language |
| Limbo | Designed for applications running distributed systems on small computers |
| CSS | CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) specifies a web page’s appearance |
| Raku | Member of the Perl family of programming languages |
| Coq | Dependently typed language similar to Agda, Idris, F*, Lean, and others |