Clojure Distilled by Dmitri Sotnikov.
From the post:
The difficulty in learning Clojure does not stem from its syntax, which happens to be extremely simple, but from having to learn new methods for solving problems. As such, we’ll focus on understanding the core concepts and how they can be combined to solve problems the functional way.
All the mainstream languages belong to the same family. Once you learn one of these languages there is very little effort involved in learning another. Generally, all you have to do is learn some syntax sugar and the useful functions in the standard library to become productive. There might be a new concept here and there, but most of your existing skills are easily transferable.
This is not the case with Clojure. Being a Lisp dialect, it comes from a different family of languages and requires learning new concepts in order to use effectively. There is no reason to be discouraged if the code appears hard to read at first. I assure you that the syntax is not inherently difficult to understand, and that with a bit of practice you might find it to be quite the opposite.
The goal of this guide is to provide an overview of the core concepts necessary to become productive with Clojure. Let’s start by examining some of the key advantages of the functional style and why you would want to learn a functional language in the first place.
…
Dmitri says near the end, “…we only touched on only a small portion of the overall language…,” but it is an impressive “…small portion…” and is very likely to leave you wanting to hear more.
The potential for immutable data structures in collaborative environments is vast. I’ll have something longer to post on that next week.
Enjoy!