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What makes Clojure special?

It’s a Lisp!

  • one of the oldest languages (and still in use)
  • source of many language innovations
  • small core
    • special forms
    • Clojure’s (def, if, do, let, quote, var, fn, loop, recur, throw, try-catch-finally, + Java interop)
  • almost no syntax
  • code is data, data is code
  • Clojure is different from other Lisps in some ways
    • on the JVM
    • immutable data structures by default

Dynamic Development

  • not only compile and run, but
  • interact with your program!

Functional Programming

  • first-class functions
  • immutable data structures
  • extensible abstractions
    • sequence library
  • recursion
    • tail call optimization
    • loop, recur

Not Object-Oriented

  • but strong polymorphism support
    • based on multi-dispatch (see e.g. multimethod example in clojure.java.io/do-copy)
    • clojure.contrib.match (Pattern Matching)

…on the JVM

  • nice interoperability
  • leverage a vast pool of libraries
  • easy proxying of classes and interfaces

Designed for Concurrency

  • immutable data structures
  • but state change is supported
  • Software Transactional Memory System (STM)
    • Refs, Atoms, Agents
  • dynamic vars

Further Reading