Do or do not...there is no try.
Clojure is Lisp on the JVM. Perplexing and powerful, Lisp is one of the first programming languages and one of the latest too. Dozens of dialects tried to launch Lisp into the mainstream and failed. The syntax and programming model so far have been too much for a typical developer to absorb. Yet, there’s something special about Lisp that’s worth revisiting, so the new dialects continue to emerge. Some of the best programming universities lead with the Lisp language to form young minds while they are still open.
In many ways, Clojure is the wise kung fu master, the oracle on the hill, or the enigmatic Jedi trainer. Think Yoda. In Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back,[17] Yoda was introduced as a cute character with little significance. His communication style is often inverted and hard to understand, like Lisp prefix notation (understand me later you will). He seems too small to make a difference, like the Lisp syntactic rules with little more than parentheses and symbols. But it quickly becomes apparent that there is more to Yoda than meets the eye. As with Lisp, he is old, with wisdom (like the quote above) that has been honed by time and tried under fire. Like Lisp’s macros and higher-order constructs, he has an inner power that others can’t seem to master. In many ways, Lisp started it all. Before diving in too deeply, let’s talk a little bit about Lisp and then shift gears to what’s exciting about Clojure.