Clojure

Clojure

Paradigm	multi-paradigm: agent-oriented[1] concurrent[2][3] functional[4] logic[5] macro[6] pipeline[7]
Family	Lisp
Designed by	Rich Hickey
First appeared	2007; 17 years ago (2007)
Stable release	1.11.2[8] / 8 March 2024; 56 days ago (2024-03-08)
Typing discipline	dynamic strong
Memory management	Garbage collection via a host (JVM, CLR, a JavaScript runtime such as V8 in case of ClojureScript or BEAM (see below)
Platform	Java JavaScript .NET
License	Eclipse Public
Filename extensions	.clj .cljs .cljr .cljc .cljd .edn
Website	clojure.org
Dialects
ClojureScript, ClojureDart
Influenced by
C# C++[9] Common Lisp Erlang Haskell[10] Java ML Prolog Racket[11] Ruby[12] Scheme Wolfram Language[13]
Influenced
Elixir Hy Janet[14] LFE Pixie[15] Rhine[16]
Clojure Programming at Wikibooks

Clojure (/ˈkloʊʒər/, like closure)^[17][18] is a dynamic and functional dialect of the Lisp programming language on the Java platform.^[19][20]

Like most other Lisps, Clojure's syntax is built on S-expressions that are first parsed into data structures by a reader before being compiled.^[21][17] Clojure's reader supports literal syntax for maps, sets and vectors along with lists, and these are compiled to the mentioned structures directly.^[21] Clojure treats code as data and has a Lisp macro system.^[22] Clojure is a Lisp-1 and is not intended to be code-compatible with other dialects of Lisp, since it uses its own set of data structures incompatible with other Lisps.^[22]

Clojure advocates immutability and immutable data structures and encourages programmers to be explicit about managing identity and its states.^[23] This focus on programming with immutable values and explicit progression-of-time constructs is intended to facilitate developing more robust, especially concurrent, programs that are simple and fast.^[24][25][17] While its type system is entirely dynamic, recent efforts have also sought the implementation of a dependent type system.^[26]

The language was created by Rich Hickey in the mid-2000s, originally for the Java platform; the language has since been ported to other platforms, such as the Common Language Runtime (.NET). Hickey continues to lead development of the language as its benevolent dictator for life.