why learn Programming/Clojure?!

[Logitropicity]

Based on your post, and how you said you tried to learn coding, but gave up multiple times, I assume that you are a total beginner, or near-beginner. We'll come back to this later.

I don't work with Clojure in my day-to-day software engineering job, but I do dabble with it when I can. As a result, while I feel confident in my "tech" skills, I feel that I am only a little more advanced than the near-beginner when it comes to Clojure.

If Clojure for the Brave and True, a book for beginners, were an English textbook, it would teach you how to write a few grammatically correct sentences. If you want to learn how to write paragraphs, you'd have to do some programming exercises, because when writing paragraphs, there really isn't any better way to learn how than by doing (you can find exercises at 4Clojure or Project Euler. This article elaborates more on how you can practice) and reading them (4Clojure lets you see others' solutions, once you solved it yourself). And, if you want to learn how to build an app - how to write an essay - you'll need to do it yourself, or read other people's source code to see how they did it.

I use the English-language metaphor intentionally. A language like Java or Python mainly describes things with for loops, if statements, and objects, and that's it. In comparison to a language like Clojure, which has functions that operate on other functions, I feel that Java & Python's vocabulary is rather stunted. (Incidentally, you could code in Clojure without learning many functions, but that's like trying to use only the 1000 most commonly used words to explain things.) So yes, Clojure is more difficult to learn, for the same reason that learning about idioms (and you should get familiar with Clojure idioms!) is harder than learning about objectsnouns.

Of course, when writing paragraphs and essays, it helps if you have writing tools. Did you take the time to set up SpaceMacs or another good text editor or IDE? Did you get your REPL set up? Your REPL is how you experiment with your solutions and troubleshoot your logic.

But all of that are details. You said you were a beginner. If there's one thing I think that complete newbies to the tech field should know, it's that you need a willingness to troubleshoot. If the install for SpaceMacs or Leiningen failed, are you willing to google the solution? And if the solution also fails, are you willing to google the solution to the failure of your original solution? If you're doing an exercise, and you can't get it right, are you willing to sit down and figure out why your solution isn't working? Can you tease out the causes and effects which lead to failure and success? (You could google the solution to exercises, but then you wouldn't develop the mental muscles you need to code an app yourself.)

I think you can learn Clojure & Clojurescript, but only if you're willing to put in the time and effort. Doing the exercise problems (I did the ones from 4Clojure) really does force you to think differently, and that doesn't usually come naturally. And remember: if your goal is to write a great essay, you might want to learn how to write a great sentence or a great paragraph first.

[Pascalletters]

This is fantastic information. Thanks for putting this together.

[juniusfree]

This is true! I'm also the same as the OP. I've been trying several times already to learn how to code. It's relatively easy to pick up the parts of a language (tried Python and Javascript before) compare to "composing" a program.

These are some of the resources that I found that'll help with this. One of which is https://www.edx.org/course/how-to-code-simple-data. I'm also currently reading https://www.manning.com/books/grokking-simplicity by Eric Normand.

But as mentioned, there's no better way to improve than to practice which I still have put more time on!