We looked into why you would want to use Clojure for your projects from a developer’s point of view. Clojure is not a mainstream programming language, but it is an easy solution that can be used to complete the system.
All Clojure advantages are grounded on four principles. Let’s see how they are enforced in language.
1. Homoiconicity
Clojure is typically related to the prominent and elegant Lisp family. One of its significant parcels is homoiconicity, which causes lively debate among software inventors worldwide. According to Wikipedia:
“A language is homoiconic if a program that is written in it can be manipulated as data using 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. However, you can manipulate it using other Lisp codes. So, Clojure inventors can access and also transform code into data. This Lisp peculiarity shows the conception of “code as data.”
This feature is conceptually possible due to the minimal and utterly consistent Clojure syntax. The entire program code is represented through S-expressions (tree-like structures). It is of the same type of code representation as supported by Clojure Core. So, code can be converted into data via macros easily.
The robust macro system gives a chance to develop code that generates other code. It allows software developers to write extensions without waiting for the programming language designers to enforce them. The latter is also applicable for writing your Domain-Specific Languages (DSLs) with the use of macros. They are responsible for “translation” from your language to Clojure.
The essentials of well-designed DSLs are pretty obvious. Clojure’s macro system gives you great chances to use them.
Addressing the internal DSL with these macros leads to another level of code refactoring. It also expands the language itself with current elements. They are helpful for the perpetration of business aims in the context of each particular project.
The core. Sync macro in Clojure is one of the best illustrations of this principle benefit. Core. Sync brings the power of CSP-style concurrency to Clojure. With the help of macro, it was created as a library with no interrupting the Clojure language.
Compojure is another favorite Clojure library that uses the homoiconicity principle.
It looks complex, but in reality, this Clojure abstraction offers a pleasant coding experience and helps to make effects referentially transparent. The macro above is demanded, hiding the realization details from the inventor. That is, of course, until they do not need them.
2. Functional Approach
What causes complexity and issues in computer programs? Side effects are one of the significant factors of our challenges. You cannot avoid them altogether, but you can localize the spillovers, and the programming language should help.
Clojure enables you to write pure functions as a functional language. The results of similar operations depend on the input parameters. It does not count how numerous times you start the process; the result is usually the same. It simplifies testing because you don’t have to try several queues and find the proper state of inputs.
Pure functions are also handy for refactoring and analyzing. They are straightforward indeed if they do a great job.
Clojure’s beauty lies in how the language impeccably joins individual elements into a coherent total.
Clojure, such as JavaScript, works using functions as values. These values can be sent as parameters and returned from other functions. It offers flexibility for an investor because they can delay or customize an on-the-fly logic realization. Also, the functional approach allows making the processors middleware by default. So, you can design them for several business goals ranging from logging to conditional email sending.
3. Immutable Data Structures
Clojure has features of an object-oriented language. So, it initially includes a set of unchangeable structures and ways of working with them.
They resemble ordinary JavaScript arrays and Hash Maps, but no operations can change their values. Instead of changing, it develops a new structure with updated data.
The invariability is handy when writing multithreaded operations because it negates an entire class of bugs related to the synchronization of changing variables between threads. So, you can build whole information models using a few immutable data structures included in Clojure. The predictable code is easy to write and test, which helps to create a product quickly.
For illustration, the development of an e-commerce site that supports over one million users has been completed in just four months, proving that Clojure enables programmers to concentrate on engineering rather than extra details.
4. A Multipurpose Solution
Clojure is a good option for several projects; you can use it from the social networking industry to Big Data solutions. Clojure language is initially targeted for working with JVM. So, the standard modern Clojure perpetration uses the Java Virtual Machine. It enables simple commerce by creating Java objects, Java libraries and using the Maven repository. Java site’s maturity and the massive ecosystem offer several benefits for Clojure developers.
An intriguing fact is that although JVM primarily runs Java, about 3% of JVM users are programming in Clojure. It’s a significant fact, which shows the eventuality of functional programming and Clojure itself.
Also, ClojureScript is practically developing, which is another Clojure implementation, it includes compilation to JavaScript.
As a result of the same syntax, you can write both front-end and backend in Clojure (or ClojureScript in the case of Node.js applications). At times, the same code overlaps in the front-end and backend. The Clojure compiler lets you put this code in *.clojure files and use it on each side.
