Clojure for a lisp illiterate

Posted by dbyrne on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by dbyrne
Published on 2010-05-28T23:14:28Z Indexed on 2010/05/28 23:22 UTC
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Filed under:

learning

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functional-programming

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lisp

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clojure

I am a lifelong object-oriented programmer. My job is primarily java development, but I have experience in a number of languages. Ruby gave me my first real taste of functional programming. I loved the features Ruby borrowed from the functional paradigm such as closures and continuations. Eventually, I graduated to Scala. This has been a great way to gradually learn to approach non-trivial problems in a functional manner.

Now I am interested in Clojure. I know all the sexy features that make it enticing (software transactional memory, macros, etc.), but I just can't get used to "thinking in lisp". I've seen Rich Hickey's screencasts aimed at java programmers, but they are geared towards explaining language features and not approaching real world problems.

I am looking for any advice or resources which have made this transition easier for others.

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