{"id":13594,"date":"2014-08-14T12:22:16","date_gmt":"2014-08-14T12:22:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/definition\/clojure\/"},"modified":"2014-08-21T14:41:07","modified_gmt":"2014-08-21T14:41:07","slug":"clojure","status":"publish","type":"definition","link":"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/definition\/30313\/clojure","title":{"rendered":"Clojure"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span id=\"what_does_clojure_mean\">What Does Clojure Mean?<\/span><\/h2>\n<p>Clojure is a dynamic programming language that is a dialect, or variant, of the Lisp programming language. It is designed to be general-purpose and combines the interactive development and approachability of a scripting language with a robust and efficient infrastructure used for multithreaded programming. <\/p>\n<p>It is also a compiled language that compiles directly into JVM bytecode while remaining completely dynamic.<\/p>\n<h2><span id=\"techopedia_explains_clojure\">Techopedia Explains Clojure<\/span><\/h2>\n<p>Clojure was developed by Rich Hickey as a dialect of Lisp that directly targets the Java Virtual Machine (JVM). Because of this, it shares the code-as-data philosophy and the powerful macro system of Lisp. It is predominantly considered a functional programming language that features a set of immutable and persistent data structures. <\/p>\n<p>Clojure also has a software transactional memory system when a mutable state is required, and a reactive agent system, which ensures that multithreaded designs are correct and clean.<\/p>\n<p> The features of Clojure include:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li> Tight Java integration where applications are easily packaged and deployed to JVMs and other application servers<\/li>\n<li> Functions are considered first-class objects <\/li>\n<li> Dynamic development with a read-eval-print loop<\/li>\n<li> Emphasis is given to recursion and other higher-order functions as opposed to side-effect-based looping<\/li>\n<li> Provides immutable and persistent data structures such as hashmaps, lists and sets<\/li>\n<li> The agent system, dynamic var system and software transactional memory allows concurrent programming<\/li>\n<li> Multimethods allow dynamic dispatch on the values or types of any arguments<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What Does Clojure Mean? Clojure is a dynamic programming language that is a dialect, or variant, of the Lisp programming language. It is designed to be general-purpose and combines the interactive development and approachability of a scripting language with a robust and efficient infrastructure used for multithreaded programming. It is also a compiled language that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7813,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"definitioncat":[273,244,216],"class_list":["post-13594","definition","type-definition","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","definitioncat-devops","definitioncat-programming-languages","definitioncat-software-development"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v23.8 (Yoast SEO v23.8) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>What is Clojure? - Definition from Techopedia<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"This definition explains the meaning of Clojure and why it matters.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/definition\/30313\/clojure\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Clojure\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This definition explains the meaning of Clojure and why it matters.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/definition\/30313\/clojure\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Techopedia\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/techopedia\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2014-08-21T14:41:07+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@techopedia\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"1 minute\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/definition\/30313\/clojure#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/definition\/30313\/clojure\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Margaret Rouse\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/#\/schema\/person\/f5dd538e31ee352d105b8af36c4268a5\"},\"headline\":\"Clojure\",\"datePublished\":\"2014-08-14T12:22:16+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2014-08-21T14:41:07+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/definition\/30313\/clojure\"},\"wordCount\":230,\"commentCount\":0,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/#organization\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/definition\/30313\/clojure#respond\"]}],\"articleSection\":\"\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/definition\/30313\/clojure\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/definition\/30313\/clojure\",\"name\":\"What is Clojure? 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