Functional Programming: A PragPub Anthology

The Infrastructure

MS:

Let’s talk about that infrastructure. Say I’m a Java developer. I’m not afraid to learn a new language, but I’m not about to abandon the whole Java ecosystem. What does Clojure offer me?

RH:

Clojure lets you do just that—learn something new and not give up your investment and knowledge. That’s true of all of the JVM languages, though—Groovy, JRuby, Scala, etc. Clojure is unique there in giving you the performance of a compiled language and the flexibility of a dynamic language. Performance is closer to Java than to Python. Access to Java from Clojure, and Clojure from Java, is easy, wrapper-free, and fast.

MS:

Clojure’s performance may be close to raw Java, but the experience of programming in Clojure is very un-Java-like. ...