Clojure: My Journey of 1.5 Years

Ovidiu Stoica
2 min readApr 20, 2022

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After 6 years in the JS world, I discovered Clojure, and it made me a better programmer. Here’s that journey:

Phase 1: Awareness

Phase 2: Thinking of learning

  • January 10, 2021: I watch talks from others on the benefits of Clojure, their journey, and advantages over Javascript
  • January 12, 2021: I downloaded a book (I forgot which one). Good intro, but no real-world application

Phase 3: I’m learning it

  • January 13, 2021: I buy Jacek Schae’s Courses bundle to learn how to build a REST API
  • January 20, 2021: I decided to build the backend of my startup Designvote in Clojure based on Jacek’s course and using IntelliJ as shown in the course

Phase 4: Real-world usage

  • February 2021: I’m building the backend in Clojure, and it is so complicated, and I hate myself for not choosing Node instead.
  • March 2021: I joined Clojurians Slack and worked up the nerve to ask my first question. Sean Corfield answers and solves in 2 minutes what I worked on the last four days.
  • April 2021: I finally understand REPL development after three months of using (println X) to debug

Phase 5: ClojureScript

Phase 6: Stability and Clojure Job

  • November 2021: I focus on marketing for Designvote, but I’m actively looking at job boards
  • January 2022 — March 2022: I do interviews for Clojure jobs. Impostor syndrome is hitting hard.
  • March 2022: I get a great job in Clojure, and I double my income
  • April 2022: Present-day working and writing about Clojure and its differences from the Javascript ecosystem.

Conclusion:

The journey toward this language is not easy, but it is gratifying. We can invest in a better learning path for beginners.

Read this post and more on my Typeshare Social Blog

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Ovidiu Stoica
Ovidiu Stoica

Written by Ovidiu Stoica

Hi, I’m Ovi Stoica! I help people build quality software and I write about technology, startups and marketing for developers.

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