Clojure for the Brave and True by Daniel Higginbotham

Normally, programming tutorials encourage you to write code that prints “Hello World,” but I like my examples to have real-world utility, so your task is to print “My pants are on fire!” This information is objectively more useful.

Daniel Higginbotham

Clojure for the Brave and True by Daniel Higginbotham is the best introduction to programming language I ever read. I think it covers about everything a programmer needs to know about a new language: - ideas and paradigms behind a language, - how it differs from other languages, - range of examples from simple to complicated ones, - tooling and ecosystem, including IDE and build tools, - best practices.

I like the fact that the author does not try to cover every aspect of Clojure. He articulates which aspects he is going to cover and which are outside of the book’s scope.

And all that with humor and beneficial exercises at the end of many articles.