The best books that provide essential Clojure resources

Why am I passionate about this?

With over a decade of experience in web development using Clojure and active involvement in the Clojure open source community, I have gathered invaluable insights into effective use of the language. I am eager to share some of the experience and knowledge I have acquired with those new to the language.


I wrote...

Web Development with Clojure: Build Large, Maintainable Web Applications Interactively

By Dmitri Sotnikov, Scot Brown,

Book cover of Web Development with Clojure: Build Large, Maintainable Web Applications Interactively

What is my book about?

Web Development with Clojure will get you up to speed on the changes in the rapidly evolving Clojure ecosystem—the many new libraries, tools, and best practices. Build a fully featured SPA app with re-frame, a popular front-end framework for ClojureScript supporting a functional style MVC approach for managing the UI state in single-page application-style applications. Gain expertise in the powerful Ring stack using the Luminus framework. Learn how Clojure works with databases and speeds development of RESTful services. See why ClojureScript is rapidly becoming a popular front-end platform, and use ClojureScript with the popular re-frame library to build single-page applications.

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of Clojure Applied: From Practice to Practitioner

Dmitri Sotnikov Why did I love this book?

The Clojure ecosystem presents a multifaceted landscape that can pose a significant challenge for novices, thereby rendering the language itself daunting to approach. However, this comprehensive book aims to alleviate these complexities by providing a guided pathway for readers to construct practical web applications using Clojure.

By following the structured framework within these pages, readers will not only gain a deeper understanding of the language's nuances but also acquire essential proficiency in employing it efficiently. Furthermore, this authoritative resource elucidates numerous best practices, empowering readers to cultivate a skillset that maximizes their effectiveness in utilizing Clojure to its fullest potential.

This book is a great choice for Clojure beginners because it takes the reader through pragmatic examples of using the language, and applying its features effective to solve real-world problems.

By Ben Vandgrift, Alex Miller,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Clojure Applied as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Think in the Clojure way! Once you're familiar with Clojure, take the next step with extended lessons on the best practices and most critical decisions you'll need to make while developing. Learn how to model your domain with data, transform it with pure functions, manage state, spread your work across cores, and structure apps with components. Discover how to use Clojure in the real world, and unlock the speed and power of this beautiful language on the Java Virtual Machine. Clojure Applied gives you the practical, realistic advice and depth of field that's been missing from your development practice. You…


Book cover of Living Clojure: An Introduction and Training Plan for Developers

Dmitri Sotnikov Why did I love this book?

This book is an excellent choice for experienced developers who are looking to learn functional programming style. The book introduces Clojure concepts and guides the reader through a series of problems where these concepts are applied in real-world scenarios making it an essential resource for learning the language.

By Carin Meier,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Living Clojure as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

If you're an experienced programmer looking for a thorough but gentle introduction to Clojure, this is the perfect guide for you. Author Carin Meier not only provides a practical overview of this JVM language and its functional programming concepts, but also includes a complete hands-on training course to help you learn Clojure in a structured way. The first half of the book takes you through Clojure's unique design and lets you try your hand at two Clojure projects, including a web app. The holistic course in second half provides you with critical tools and resources, including ways to plug into…


Book cover of Clojure Cookbook: Recipes for Functional Programming

Dmitri Sotnikov Why did I love this book?

This book contains many practical examples of solving common programming tasks using Clojure, and it's an excellent choice for a practical Clojure reference.

Developers who are new to the functional programming style will find a lot of useful patterns for solving problems using idiomatic Clojure style. The book is an essential reference for Clojure developers.

By Luke VanderHart, Ryan Neufeld,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Clojure Cookbook as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

With more than 150 detailed recipes, this cookbook shows experienced Clojure developers how to solve a variety of programming tasks with this JVM language. The solutions cover everything from building dynamic websites and working with databases to network communication, cloud computing, and advanced testing strategies. And more than 60 of the world's best Clojurians contributed recipes. Each recipe includes code that you can use right away, along with a discussion on how and why the solution works, so you can adapt these patterns, approaches, and techniques to situations not specifically covered in this cookbook.
Master built-in primitive and composite data…


Book cover of ClojureScript: Up and Running: Functional Programming for the Web

Dmitri Sotnikov Why did I love this book?

This book introduces developers to ClojureScript which is a dialect of Clojure that targets JavaScript runtimes.

It's a great choice for web developers who are considering building full-stack Clojure applications. The book will help developers learn about the differences between Clojure and ClojureScript, and to make effective use of both language dialects for building applications that span both the front-end and the backend.

By Stuart Sierra, Luke Vanderhart,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked ClojureScript as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Learn how to build complete client-side applications with ClojureScript, the Clojure language variant that compiles to optimized JavaScript. This hands-on introduction shows you how ClojureScript not only has similarities to JavaScript - without the flaws - but also supports the full semantics of its parent language. You'll delve into ClojureScript's immutable data structures, lazy sequences, first-class functions, macros, and support for JavaScript libraries. No previous experience with Clojure or ClojureScript is necessary. If you're familiar with JavaScript, HTML, CSS, and the DOM, you'll quickly discover that ClojureScript has the same reach as JavaScript, but with more power.
Start writing ClojureScript…


Book cover of Professional Clojure

Dmitri Sotnikov Why did I love this book?

This book focuses on Clojure features that make it a great choice for building high-quality professional applications. It will guide the readers through an effective Clojure workflow that will help beginners to get up and running in a professional setting.

This is an essential resource for using Clojure to build real-world projects.

By Jeremy Anderson, Michael Gaare, Justin Holguin , Nick Bailey , Timothy Pratley

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Professional Clojure as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Clear, practical Clojure for the professional programmer

Professional Clojure is the experienced developer's guide to functional programming using the Clojure language. Designed specifically to meet the needs of professional developers, this book briefly introduces functional programming before skipping directly to the heart of using Clojure in a real-world setting. The discussion details the read-eval-print workflow that enables fast feedback loops, then dives into enterprise-level Clojure development with expert guidance on web services, testing, datomics, performance, and more. Read from beginning to end, this book serves as a clear, direct guide to Clojure programming-but the comprehensive coverage and detail makes it…


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