When I started my first job I was programming in Ruby sans Rails, and knew I had to get up to speed quickly. I purchased Russ Olsen’s Eloquent Ruby (2011) and read it cover to cover, though I struggled a bit towards the end. I tried some things out, and then I read it again. Then I played around some more. I learned the joys of metaprogramming and then burnt my fingers. I went back and read it a third time, now with the understanding that some of the things in the back were dangerous.

Up until Eloquent Ruby, the resources I had used to learn all had the same agenda: how to tell the computer to do stuff. In other words, they would describe the features of things without spending too much time on the attitudes toward them. And it is much harder to do the latter.

The concept of Eloquent Ruby came as a revelation to me at the time - the idea that there were not just rules that make up a language, but idioms too, attitudes that might even change over time. I loved the idea that I could learn to speak Ruby not just adequately but like a native.

By this time I felt bold enough to call myself a Rubyist, and I owed much of the enthusiasm I felt toward the language, and the success I had early on in my career, to this book. I bought another of Olsen’s books on design patterns and read it cover to cover, again, multiple times. I was ambitious and knew that “good” programmers had experience and expertise working in different programming paradigms while still not sure in what direction I would go. So I learned with great interest that he was either working on, or had at least declared an intention to write, a book about Clojure.

I had no idea at this point what Clojure or even Lisp was, but the author had gained my trust enough for me to want to read about his new book, whatever it was about.

And of course I had no clue at the time that this book would be in the pipeline for years. I understand; these things take time. But, being impatient, when I felt confident enough to start learning another language, I decided to go ahead with Clojure anyway.

I have now played with it for about 3 years, have pored through some books that were good at what they set out to do (exhaustively survey the features of the language), have built some things of a certain size. Alas, not getting to code and think in my second language every day, I have never felt that I really “got” Clojure, that I really knew it in the same way that I knew Ruby. I could not properly call myself a Clojurist (do they even call themselves that? See, I don’t know).

So I was pretty psyched when I learned that Olsen’s book was nearing completion, and that its title was, perfectly, Getting Clojure. When it came out in beta form, I did something I almost never do - I bought the eBook (I typically like to do my reading away from the computer).

And it has not disappointed. I am so happy that all the elements of Olsen’s style are present and on top form - his gentle humor, his writing with compassion for the learner. He knows crucially what to leave out and what to explain deeper, to illustrate. There are examples, contrived, yet so much more compelling than most (it’s hard to formulate new examples that are sufficiently complex yet small and interesting enough to sustain interest). There are lots of details on why you might want to use a particular thing, or more importantly, why you might not want to - in Olsen’s words “staying out of trouble” - details that are so vital to writing good, idiomatic code in whatever language. And there are examples of real Clojure in use, often pulled from the Clojure source itself, that not only illustrate but give me the confidence to dive in myself, something that wouldn’t have occurred to me alone.

It seems ironic that Getting Clojure isn’t the book I wanted way back when I first heard about it, but it is the book that I need now. I enjoyed going over the earlier chapters, cementing knowledge along the way, forming new narratives that simplify the surface area of the language while giving me the things I need to know to find out more. And it gave me the confidence to dive way deeper than I thought would be comfortable. For example, Olsen encourages you to write your own Lisp implementation as an aside while he looks at the core of Clojure’s. I went ahead and did this and am so glad that I did - I feel like I have gained a much deeper understanding of computer programs in general, something that may have been lacking in my not coming from a Computer Science background.

I have no doubt that this book will appeal to many others from different backgrounds, different places in their development. But I can confidently say that if, like myself, you are self taught, or don’t come from a “traditional” background, perhaps Ruby or a similar dynamic language is your bread and butter but you are trying to expand your horizons, if you need materials that focus on the learner and building up understanding in a more structured way, Getting Clojure gets my highest possible recommendation.