Clojure - Getting Started

To learn Clojure, you can use the following resources:

Guides & Tutorials

• Learn Clojure guide: Covers the basics.
• REPL introduction: Learn how to use the REPL interactively.
• Structural editing: Understand working with code as forms.

Books

• Programming Clojure (4th Edition)
• Getting Clojure
• Clojure for the Brave and True
• Living Clojure

Practice & Community

• 4Clojure: A large set of practice problems.
• Exercism Clojure track: Problems with mentor support.
• Clojure Camp: Interactive community for beginners.
• Other learning resources

Clojure is a dynamic development environment where you interact with your program while writing it. To work with Clojure, you need two essential components:

1. Clojure: Provides the language runtime, a REPL (Read Eval Print Loop), library support, and program runner. Install this first.
2. Editor: Must support interactive development, specifically evaluation in source files and structural editing (working with nested forms in addition to character editing).

Refer to the installation guide for specific setup instructions for your operating system.

The essential workflow for Clojure development is consistent across operating systems and editors:

1. Create or open a source file.
2. Connect a Clojure environment (the REPL) to your editor.
3. Write Clojure code in the editor.
4. Evaluate the code in the editor using the connected REPL.
5. Repeat the process.

This workflow relies on REPL programming and structural editing (treating code as nested forms rather than plain text).

For questions and interaction with other Clojure developers:

• Ask Clojure (ask.clojure.org): Official Q&A and knowledge base.
• Clojurians Slack (clojurians.net): Live chat channels including #beginners and #jobs.
• Clojureverse (clojureverse.org): Community forum.