3. Building blocks of Clojure

This chapter covers Clojure functions in more depth Scope rules in Clojure Clojure namespaces Clojure’s destructuring feature Clojure metadata

When people are good at something already (such as a programming language), and they try to learn something new (such as another programming language), they often fall into what Martin Fowler calls an improvement ravine. For programming, the ravine refers to the drop in productivity experienced when one has to relearn how to do things in the new language. I’ve been guilty of switching back to a language I’m already good at in order to get the job done. It sometimes takes me several attempts to get over enough of the ravine to get simple things done. The next few chapters aim to do that—we’ll review the basics of Clojure in more detail. After reading them, you’ll be comfortable enough to solve problems of reasonable complexity. We’ll also cover most constructs of the language, most of which will be familiar to programmers who use other common languages.