Beginner Programmer Learning Path

A fun and gentle introduction to the Clojure language, functional programming, and data-drive programming, through the eyes of baking robot X5.

Clojure is based on collections, but how are they used? What are some patterns for making the most of them? This course introduces you to the workhorses of the Clojure programming language, the immutable collections.

Web development in Clojure is just like everything else: you build up complex behavior from simple parts. This course builds a TODO list app from scratch, explaining the important concepts, and deploying it to a cloud service.

Learn these three tools -- map, filter, and reduce-- and you'll be well on your way to developing a functional mindset.

When you are looking at a variable, how do you know what it refers to? The rules that determine what variable names refer to are collectively called the scoping rules. Learning the three kinds of scope and when to use each will help you make your code more maintainable.

Are you wondering how to test your code? Would you like to use the most popular testing framework for Clojure? Do you want to know the correct conventions so that your tests work well in IDEs and continuous integration services?

This course teaches all of that in a fun, interactive style.

Namespace declarations can be complicated. They manage all of the dependencies of one namespace on another. There are a lot of options. In this course, we go over how to make best use of them.

Leiningen is the de facto standard project tool in Clojure. This course gives an overview of lein commands, projects, templates, and dependencies.

You want to learn Clojure but it seems so daunting. Who has the time to read and read and then start yet another half-finished project? Clojure in One Hour is a series of short projects that you can do in one hour. No theory, just hands-on projects to get something done.

Clojure sequences are lazy by default. That gives you big benefits like separation of concerns, but it also brings with it some gotchas. This course is mostly about exploring those gotchas--problems that can bite you if you're not ready for them--and techniques to work with each one. Being prepared is the best antidote to a bad bite. After dealing with the downsides, we explore the big benefits.

What is recursion? How do you write recursive functions? Does it work with laziness? How is it different from a for loop? All of these questions are answered, and more, using simple, clear examples. You'll never have fear of recursion again.

You've heard that Clojure is great for concurrency. But what tools does Clojure give you? And how should you use those tools?

These lessons are meant to each answer a specific question and help you build the skills you need to address a wide variety of concurrency problems.

Learn the tricky corners of Clojure syntax, like for comprehensions and function definitions.

This course teaches you the hands-on, nitty gritty details of the JVM and Clojure/Java interop that you would pick up after many years of programming Java. It combines videos with reference sheets to give you easy access to the accumulated skills of years of experience. With this course, you won't have to worry about stack traces, JVM options, or the standard library again.