Chapter 6. Being lazy and set in your ways
This chapter covers
We’ve now reached the apex of imperative knowledge and stand at the precipice leading toward functional programming. We mentioned in section 2.3 that the definitions of functional programming are widely disparate, and unfortunately this book won’t work to unify them. Instead, we’ll start in this chapter to build a basis for Clojure’s style of functional programming by digging into its core supporting maxims. In addition, this chapter covers in greater depth the parts of Clojure’s composite types that we only touched on.
We’ve touched on immutability throughout this book, but we’ve avoided discussing why Clojure has chosen it as a cornerstone principle. Though no panacea, fostering immutability at the language level solves many difficult problems right out of the box, while simplifying many others. Coming from a language background where mutability interwoven with imperative programming methods reign, it often requires a significant conceptual leap to twist your mind to accept and utilize immutability and functional programming. In this section, we’ll build a conceptual basis for immutability as it relates to Clojure’s underlying philosophy as well as why you should work to foster immutability even when outside the warming confines of Clojure proper.