Full-Stack web developer
Clojure is not a mainstream programming language, but the Fresh-Code team practically completes projects with this great and convenient solution. That is why I want to explain technical reasons in which Clojure development matters.
WHY CLOJURE?
What is the final purpose of developing any programming language? It tends to enable writing practical and straightforward code. The author of Clojure, Rich Hickey, wanted to make written programs simple. Clojure allows to speed up the process of software development and also reduces the time required for code understanding, support and changing.
Simplicity is necessary for reliability.
Rich Hickey, author of Clojure
Clojure syntax can make it difficult for beginners, and it’s also easy and convenient for learning and coding. After getting familiar with this language, you will see the advanced benefits of enterprise projects.
All Clojure pros are based on four principles. Let’s see how they are used in the language.
Why Clojure?
- HOMOICONICITY
Clojure relates to the elegant and prominent Lisp family. One of its significant properties is homoiconicity, which causes a debate among software developers.
According to Wikipedia:
A language is homo-iconic if a program written in it can be manipulated as data utilizing the language. Thus the program’s internal representation can be inferred just by reading the program itself.
Imagine a Lisp program presented as a regular Lisp list. Even though you can manipulate it utilizing other Lisp codes. So, Clojure developers can access and at the same time transform code to data. This Lisp functionality shows the concept of “code as data.”
This function is possible because of the reduction and utterly consistent Clojure syntax. The whole program code is represented through S-expressions (tree-like structures). So, they can be transformed easily as data via macros.
The intense macro system offers an opportunity to develop code that generates other code. It allows software developers to write extensions without no waiting for the programming language designers to implement them. The latter is very important for writing own Domain-Specific Languages (DSLs) with the use of macros. They are the ones responsible for “translation” from your language to Clojure.
The benefits of well-designed DSLs are pretty obvious. Clojure’s macro system offers you great opportunities for utilizing them.
Writing the internal DSL with these macros leads to another level of code resetting. It also expands the language with modern elements. They are great for the implementation of business aims in the context of each particular project.
The core. Async macro in Clojure is one of the good examples of this principle essentials. Core. Async utilizes the power of CSP-style concurrency to Clojure. With the macro, it was created as a library with no interruption of Clojure language.
Compojure is a different popular Clojure library that is based on the homo-iconicity principle.
It seems to be advanced, but in reality, this Clojure abstraction offers a pleasant coding experience and makes things practically transparent. The macro above is required for hiding the realization documents from the developer until they don’t need them.
- FUNCTIONAL APPROACH
What causes complexity and challenges in computer programs? Side effects are one of the significant factors of our problems, and you can’t avoid them. But you can localize the spillovers, and the programming language should also help you.
As a functional language, Clojure helps you to write pure functions. The results of such operations depend on the input parameters. So, it doesn’t matter how many times you start the process, and the result is usually the same. It simplifies testing because you do not have to try several queues and find the proper state of inputs.
Pure functions are handy for analyzing and refactoring. They are effortless, even if they do a good job.
Clojure’s beauty is in its organicity. The language perfectly joins individual elements into a coherent whole.
Clojure, such as JavaScript, operates functions as values. Thus, they can be transmitted as parameters and returned from other various functions. It offers flexibility for a developer for they can delay or design an on-the-fly logic realization. However, the functional approach ensures making the processors middleware by default. So, you can create them for various business goals, which range from logging to conditional email sending.