Functional First!

Clojure was the one that showed me that immutable data is a thing and OOP Java is not everything. Cause Java was my first, my native, my be all and end all. I was a Java developer for 10 years before I discovered Clojure. And it was a revelation!

Compare two approaches to summing numbers — imperative with mutable state:

(let [sum (atom 0)]
  (doseq [n [1 2 3 4 5]] (swap! sum + n))
  @sum)

And the same thing, functional and declarative end to end:

(reduce + [1 2 3 4 5])

A typical day's command-line workflow:

cd lemonade
lein new-post "Today's reflection" --tags daily
lein static

I learned that functional programming is not just a buzzword, it's a way of thinking about problems that leads to simpler, more maintainable code. Clojure's emphasis on immutability and pure functions has changed the way I approach software development.