Review: "Programming Clojure", by Stu Halloway

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(Disclaimer: In the spirit of full disclosure, Stu is a friend,
fellow NFJS speaker, and former co-worker of mine from DevelopMentor.)

I present this review to you in two parts.

Short version: If you want to learn Clojure, and you're familiar
with at least one programming language, you'll find this a great resource. If you
don't already know a programming language, or if you already know Clojure, or if you're
looking for "best practices" to cut-and-paste, you're going to be disappointed.

Long version: Recently, fellow NFJS speaker Stu Halloway decided
to take up a new language, and came to Clojure. He found the language interesting
enough to write a book on it, something he hasn't done since his Java days, and the
result is a nice walk through the language and its environment for experienced Java
developers who want to understand Clojure's language, concurrency concepts, and programming
model.

Now, let's be 100% honest about this: if you're coming at this book expecting it to
be a language reference, you will probably be disappointed (as this
guy obviously is). Stu's not like that—he's not going to re-create material that's
available elsewhere, or that can be found with an easy Google search. Stu will not
waste your time that way—he wants to tell you a story, one that takes you from "I'm
a Java guy, but clueless about Lisp, dynamic languages, functional programming, concurrency,
or macros" to "Wow. I know kung-fu." in the shortest path possible,
but without trying to lobotomize you. He wants—no, expects—the readers of
his book to be propping the text open with a cell phone on one side and the dinner
plate on the other, craning your neck over to scan the pages and type in the examples
into the REPL shell to try them out, see them work, then spend a few minutes experimenting
with them before moving on to the next paragraph or page.

(Oh, I suppose you could just cut and paste them from the PDF version of the book,
but where's the fun in that?)

The fact is, the concepts behind Clojure make up what's important to learn
here, and readers of this book will come away like the panda from the movie, realizing
that "There is no Secret Ingredient", that the power of Clojure comes not
from its super-secret language sauce or special libraries, but in the way Clojure
programmers approach problems and think about programming. And for that reason, if
you're a programmer—even if you don't program on the JVM—you really want to take a
look at what Stu's talking about (and Rich Hickey is creating).

Just remember, cellphone and dinner plate. Otherwise you'll be missing out on so much.

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