Last Updated on December 7, 2022
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 | |
|---|---|
| ABAP | Advanced Business Application Programming |
| Ada | ALGOL-like programming language, extended from Pascal and others |
| Agda | Dependently typed functional language based on intuitionistic type theory |
| Alice | Educational language with an integrated development environment |
| Arduino | Inexpensive, flexible, open source microcontroller platform |
| Assembly | As close to writing machine code without writing in pure hexadecimal |
| Awk | Versatile language designed for pattern scanning and processing |
| Bash | ‘Bourne-Again-SHell’ is both a shell and programming language |
| BASIC | Family of general-purpose, high-level programming languages |
| C | General-purpose, procedural, portable, high-level language |
| C++ | General-purpose, portable, free-form, multi-paradigm language |
| C# | Combines the power and flexibility of C++ with the simplicity of Visual Basic |
| Chapel | Parallel-programming language in development at Cray Inc. |
| Clojure | Dialect of the Lisp programming language |
| ClojureScript | Compiler for Clojure that targets JavaScript |
| COBOL | Common Business-Oriented Language |
| CoffeeScript | A very succinct programming language that transcompiles into JavaScript |
| Coq | Dependently typed language similar to Agda, Idris, F*, Lean, and others |
| Crystal | General-purpose, concurrent, multi-paradigm, object-oriented language |
| CSS | CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) specifies a web page’s appearance |
| D | General-purpose systems programming language with a C-like syntax |
| Dart | Client-optimized programming language for fast apps |
| Dylan | Multi-paradigm language, supports functional & object-oriented programming |
| ECMAScript | Best known as the language embedded in web browsers |
| Eiffel | Object-oriented language |
| Elixir | Relatively new functional language that runs on the Erlang virtual machine |
| Elm | Functional language that compiles to JavaScript |
| Emacs Lisp | A dialect of the Lisp programming language. |
| Erlang | General-purpose, concurrent, declarative, functional language |
| F# | General purpose, strongly typed, multi-paradigm language. Part of ML |
| Factor | Dynamic stack-based language |
| Forth | Imperative stack-based programming language |
| Fortran | The first high-level language, using the first compiler |
| GDScript | Godot’s built-in language for scripting and interacting with nodes |
| Go | Compiled, statically typed programming language |
| Groovy | Powerful, optionally typed and dynamic language |
| Hack | For the HipHop Virtual Machine (HHVM), created as a dialect of PHP |
| Haml | HTML Abstraction Markup Language |
| Haskell | Standardized, general-purpose, polymorphically, statically typed language |
| HTML | HyperText Markup Language |
| Icon | High-level, general-purpose language |
| Imba | Full-stack language that compiles to performant JavaScript |
| J | Array programming language based primarily on APL |
| Java | General-purpose, concurrent, class-based, object-oriented, high-level language |
| JavaScript | Interpreted, prototype-based, scripting language |
| Julia | High-level, high-performance language for technical computing |
| Kotlin | Statically typed, general-purpose programming language with type inference |
| LabVIEW | Designed to enable domain experts to build power systems quickly |
| LaTeX | Professional document preparation system and document markup language |
| Less | Backwards-compatible language extension for Cascading Style Sheets |
| Limbo | Designed for applications running distributed systems on small computers |
| Lisp | Unique features - excellent to study programming constructs |
| Logo | Dialect of Lisp that features interactivity, modularity, extensibility |
| Lua | Designed as an embeddable scripting language |
| Markdown | Plain text formatting syntax designed to be easy-to-read and easy-to-write |
| MoonScript | Dynamic scripting programmer friendly language that compiles into Lua |
| Nim | Statically typed compiled systems language with syntax resembling Python |
| Objective-C | General purpose language which is a superset of C |
| OCaml | General-purpose, powerful, high-level language |
| Octave | High-level language, primarily intended for numerical computations |
| OpenCL | Open Computing Language |
| Pascal | Imperative and procedural language designed in the late 1960s |
| Perl | High-level, general-purpose, interpreted, scripting, dynamic language |
| Pike | Interpreted, general-purpose, high-level, cross-platform, dynamic language |
| PHP | PHP has been at the helm of the web for many years |
| Pony | Pony is an actor-model, capabilities-secure, high-performance language |
| PostScript | Page description language in electronic and desktop publishing |
| Prolog | General purpose, declarative, logic programming language |
| PureScript | Small strongly, statically typed language with expressive types |
| Python | General-purpose, structured, powerful language |
| QML | Hierarchical declarative language for user interface layout with a syntax to JSON |
| R | De facto standard among statisticians and data analysts |
| Racket | Platform for programming language design and implementation |
| Raku | Member of the Perl family of programming languages |
| Roff | Extensible text formatting language and a set of programs for printing |
| Ruby | General purpose, scripting, structured, flexible, fully object-oriented language |
| Rust | Ideal for systems, embedded, and other performance critical code |
| Scala | Modern, object-functional, multi-paradigm, Java-based language |
| Scheme | General-purpose, functional, language descended from Lisp and Algol |
| Scratch | Visual programming language designed for 8-16 year-old children |
| Solidity | Object-oriented, high-level language for implementing smart contracts |
| SQL | Access and manipulate data held in a relational database management system |
| Standard ML | One of the two main dialects of the ML language |
| Swift | Powerful and intuitive general-purpose programming language |
| Tcl | Dynamic language based on concepts of Lisp, C, and Unix shells |
| TypeScript | Strict syntactical superset of JavaScript, adding optional static typing |
| V | Statically typed compiled language to build maintainable software |
| Vala | Object-oriented language with a self-hosting compiler that generates C code |
| VHDL | Very High Speed Integrated Circuit Hardware Description Language |
| VimL | Powerful scripting language of the Vim editor |
| XML | Set of rules for defining semantic tags that describe the structure and meaning |
| Zig | General-purpose programming language and toolchain |