An introduction to the functional Clojure programming language will be given. Clojure is a new, cleaned-up Lisp dialect with powerful unhygienic macros, seamless Java interoperability, various data structure literals, and is perhaps most famous for its easy concurrency features including its Software Transaction Memory (STM.) The talk will begin with an overview of the Lisp syntax and functional ideas that may seem foreign to some. It will then go over the basic data structures and types the language supports. Then Clojure's "multimethods" with be explained, and how they let you use polymorphism and a form of inheritance without using Object Orientation. The talk will end with some short code demos showing off:
- Clojure using an existing Java charting/graphing library in a fun interactive fashion
- Clojure's easy but powerful non-locking concurrency features compared to manual locking in Java
- Clojure's DSL ability through macros as demonstrated by the practical Compojure web framework

Larry Diehl is an Orlando-based web developer and Genetic Programming researcher at the University of Central Florida. He has over 3 years of Ruby and Rails experience doing work for Bear Den Designs and IZEA, and is passionate about Test Driven Development. Larry has spoken in the past at BarCamps, ORUGs, and RubyConf08. Although an admirer of many languages, he is currently using Clojure as the primary language for his research. The occasional blog post can be found at larrytheliquid.com, but for more activity check out the larrytheliquid GitHub profile.