Web Development with Clojure: Build Bulletproof Web Apps with Less Code 2nd Edition

I have been developing with Clojure for a few years now. Most of the books I have read are focused on learning the language. This one is not an introduction to Clojure, but I still learned about the language when reading it and doing projects with what I have learned. It is more of an applied book. It gives you enough to get your feet wet and be productive, but it also gives you a lot of future areas of research and learning about the language and how it can be used effectively.What I really like is that Clojure and the tools and frameworks are so expressive that I can get useful projects completed in very few lines of code. Small enough that you can get your head around whole pieces of functionality. Something that might take several classes, and several pages of code in Java can be completed in Clojure in one to two pages of code.

This was probably a decent book but unfortunately, it is already out of date a mere three years after publishing. So far I'm barely into Chapter 1 and nothing works. Clojure has changed too much since this book was written for it to be useful.UPDATE: I've updated to three stars because I feel like this was a quality book that got caught in the common trap of being about technology that is rapidly changing.I've found out that the authors are working on another edition due out in the next 6-9 months so if you're interested in the book, you might want to wait for that next edition to be released. In the mean time, you can try out the Luminus micro-framework tutorials on that project's web site. I found it to be similar to what is covered in the first chapter of this book.

Amazing book. Not for beginners though. You should already have some notion on Clojure and web development to get the most out of this book.

Given the title, I would have expected this book to provide insight (perhaps a survey) into what web development tends to look like in the Clojure ecosystem.Unfortunately, 90% of the book covers how to use Luminus (a curated set of Clojure libraries for webdev, think Spring Boot, but less integrated). I could have overlooked this alone, but it turns out that the collection of libraries that Luminus has deemed best has changed since publication. This means that you have to choose to work through the book using the old libraries Luminus used to use, or use the newest Luminus libraries and get near zero value from the book.There did seem to be an attempt near the end of the book to show some alternatives to Luminus, but it really came off as an attempt to claim impartiality to Luminus (and perhaps justify the title) rather than a useful treatment.If you are considering buying this book to wrap your head around how webdev is done in Clojure, I'd skip it. You would probably get more out of reading the current Luminus docs.

Great book for those interested in diving into Web Development with Clojure and Clojurescript. The book has plenty of examples and good explanations. It also goes through more specifics of the Luminous Web framework. I hesitate to Luminous a framework since it is more or a template to jump start your application with building blocks for different databases or front ends.Overall this book was the best Web Development book for Clojure I have read!

I already have basic experience with Clojure and this book is a good next step for me: writing useful applications in a murky world of modern Web development. I especially like the writing style and selection of topics.

The book is great and has a lot of useful information. Dmitry, also known as "yogthos" online, is very active in Clojure community and very helpful.I would rate the book 5 stars but I can't. The author did a great job, no doubt about it, but Clojure web development is a bit hectic at the moment. I had to take a star off because I wish the book covered more technologies. There is just too much going on in Clojure, there is no single accepted way to develop web apps. Ruby, for example, has Rails and this is pretty much a defacto stack for the language. Clojure on the other hand has many different libraries and "no one true" web framework (Arachne is upcoming and we don't know much about it yet).Dmitry focuses on Reagent for the front end, and he makes some safe choices for a back end (Postgres). But if we look around available web tools for Clojure then we'll see many many different technologies. Ask anybody who is using Clojure in production and chances are they all will have different tools. There is OM, Reagent, Rum, Hoplon, etc. Many templating languages. Various databases, including unique Datomic. And there are many ways to build an app in Clojure/ClojureScript.So this is what I am getting at. Dmitry shows you how to build an app one way, his way, based on Luminus (the tool he wrote). But I am not saying that it's wrong in anyway, I just wish the book covered more technologies, that way a reader could choose what he likes best. And there are a lot of good and interesting stacks right now. Of course author couldn't explain everything in detail, it's not his fault, web development in Clojure has no unity and there is a lot going on. But here's the thing, if we had a book that covers most popular web stacks then it would be a 5 star. Perhaps in a 3rd edition Dmitry can build up on what he has and he can introduce more material.Nonetheless, this book is probably the best one on the market right now that covers web development with Clojure from start to finish. It is similar to Hartl's tutorial about Ruby on Rails.