When I first started learning Ruby, Why’s (Poignant) Guide to Ruby was a godsend. From an objective point of view, it’s really not the most detailed or thorough language tutorial, but then again, I don’t think that was really _why’s goal. I read somewhere that in writing the book, he was experimenting with a format that’s a hybrid of a novel and a programming language tutorial. I think the result is fantastic, both as a tribute to the “magic”/”fun” aspect of Ruby, and as at least a supplemental reference in one’s quest to learn Ruby. The interesting thing about W(P)GTR is that it’s mostly absurdist novel, and probably only about 40% Ruby manual, but as a result, the reader really gets sucked into the novel parts, and treasures the programming bits when they come about. The story (in addition to other bizarre tangents that _why launches into at times) provides a nice padding around the meaty Ruby examples, making them easier to digest and less tedious to explore (not that they’re particularly tedious to begin with – on the contrary, they’re quite enjoyable and, for the most part, easy for even a beginner to understand).
There are only a handful of other languages that have entertaining/fun introductory guides like W(P)GTR – Learn You a Haskell is a good example. For some reason Clojure doesn’t have such a guide yet*. It’s definitely worthy of having such a guide written about it. I think Clojure is certainly a “magical” language, much like Ruby, and definitely a powerful one as well, although that is perhaps where the similarities to Ruby end. So out of curiosity, I had the idea to start translating the examples from Why’s (Poignant) Guide to Ruby into Clojure for fun. And it was so much fun, I quickly ended up completing the project! Here is the first chapter, for your perusal.
(This is actually Chapter 3; Chapters 1-2 of W(P)GTR do not contain any code excerpts)
*By the way, I noticed that Raynes had the idea to create a fun guide to Clojure like this, and apparently even got a book deal for it, but sadly the book has yet to come to fruition. Fingers crossed that one day Clojure will have a (poignant) guide of its own!
Chapter 3
A general note: I have left out the necessary “(require ‘clojure.whatever)” when utilizing libraries such as clojure.string and clojure.java.io, for the sake of avoiding repetition. In order to run such examples, you will need to first “require” the necessary libraries.
Another note: In many examples where the Ruby version “prints” or “puts’s” the end result, I have the Clojure version simply return it, rather than using e.g. (prn x), (println x), etc. This is for the sake of simplicity. You could take any of these Clojure examples and easily print them (print …), wrap them in a function (defn …), or whatever else your heart may desire.
; ex. 1:(repeat 5"Odelay!"); ex. 2:(when-not (re-find #"aura""restaurant")(System/exit0)); ex. 3:(map clojure.string/capitalize["toast""cheese""wine"]); ex. 4:(def teddy-bear-fee121.08); ex. 5:(def total(+ orphan-feeteddy-bear-feegratuity)); ex. 6:(def population12000000000); no underscore notation :(; ex. 7:(def avril-quote"I'm a lot wiser. Now I know what the business is like -- what you have to do and how to work it."); ex. 8:(print oprah-quote)(print avril-quote)(print ashlee-simpson-debacle); ex. 9:(def EmpireStateBuilding"350 5th Avenue, NYC, NY")Although most values are essentially immutable in Clojure, so there is usually no need to capitalize the names of symbols to reflect that they are “constants.”
; ex. 10:(openfront-door); ex. 11:(close(openfront-door)); ex. 12:(is-open?front-door); ex. 13:(paintfront-door3:red); ex. 14:(-> front-door(paint3:red)(dry30)(close)); ex. 15:(print "See, no dot.")In order to translate something like Door::new( :oak ), you could create a Door record, or you could simply represent doors as map structures with a :material attribute like so:
; ex. 16(def oaken-door{:material:oak})…and maybe define a (redundant) function to “create” a new door, like this:
(defn door[material]{:materialmaterial})(door:oak); ex. 17:(repeat 2"Yes, I've used chunky bacon in my examples, but never again!"); ex. 18:(loop [](println "Much better.")(println "Ah. More space!")(println "My back was killin' me in those crab pincers.")(recur))Ex. 19, { |x,y| x + y }, is a block, something that is a little difficult to translate to idiomatic Clojure code. While there is no exact equivalent of Ruby blocks/block arguments in Clojure, this idea fits into the concept of locals/bindings. Perhaps #(+ %1 %2) may suffice as a rough translation.
; ex. 20:{:name"Peter", :profession"lion tamer", :great-love"flannel"}; ex. 21:(slurp "http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/LICENSE.txt")Thoughts? Criticisms? Corrections?