#pre-read

At my job, we always do a pre-shift, where we talk about expectations for the day and get prepared for the real work to begin. I like that idea, so this is a pre-shift - or a pre-read, if you will - on my next read: Legends & Lattes, by Travis Baldree.

I got this one from Barnes & Noble with a Christmas gift card, and there was a very helpful person - who didn't work there, might I add - who overheard me wondering where to find it and knew immediately and exactly where it was. They were very enthusiastic about me getting it, too, which I think bodes well!

I want to say I came across this one through an Instagram reel - probably one of the ones that were like, "If you liked the Dungeons and Dragons movie, you'll like..." And I liked the Dungeons and Dragons movie, so! I'm also in the mood for Low Stakes and High Fantasy, which this book is advertised as.

What do I know about the author? Nothing. I read the author bio, and he seems surprised to be a published author. Me too, friend.

What do I know about the book? Um... I think it's LGBTQ+ romance? Maybe? Based slightly on the cover? For some reason this idea is very entrenched in my mind, and I have no idea where that assumption came from. I have heard that it's basically a coffee shop AU - also no idea where I heard that - the main character is an orc, and it's possibly based on Dungeons and Dragons (the game).

I just here because the fist thing i thought when i see Mortem Obire has a new chapter is literally "I hope Harry have a good day" and then i read the tittle "the unclaimed daughter"

.

.

I know this going to hurt me

I KNOW ! ! ! !

Well my desire to cry for Harry after read the chapter going to create new memes, then i can cry and laugh in the same time

★★★★★

Let's get this out of the way up front: Getting Clojure by Russ Olsen is my new favorite 'Intro to Clojure' book and I'll be recommending it exclusively to newcomers until something better comes along. I have rarely seen a book that's as clearly organized, engagingly written, and comprehensive in its coverage. I say this primarily regarding the 'Intro to Clojure' side of the book. The subtitle suggests that it is also a text that is ideal for learning Functional Programming, and it certainly serves that purpose, but only in that it teaches Clojure and Clojure is such an amazing Functional Language.

If you are looking to use Clojure to see more of the joys of LISP I wouldn't start here. Instead, I'd go for The Joy of Clojure by Fogus and Houser instead. That book does a better job of covering Clojure as a LISP (while also doing an exemplary job of covering it as a Functional Language).

But if you want to cover what makes Clojure Clojure, from the far-reaching sequence abstraction, to the immutable data structures, to the invisible and idiomatic Java interop, and the native access to LISP idioms and techniques, all while wasting no time on fluff and reading prose that's actually surprisingly enjoyable, this is the book for you.

Title, Subtitle, and Preface ★★★★☆

Getting Clojure: Build Your Functional Skills One Idea at a Time

The Preface is excellent. It is unspeakably refreshing to read a book that tells you, in summary, everything that it's about to tell you. The one ding here is that it isn't tied directly to chapters. At least the ordering is right.

Table of Contents ★★★★☆

3 Parts:

A Language Tour

Core Abstractions and Testing

Special Topics

While we do get sectional titles they are written in the fashion of today so they are not super informative. At least they're there and I certainly have seen far worse. Once you've read the chapter also, you'd be able to use the Table of Contents to easily find the section you're looking to refer to later on because some of the meaning would've been filled in for you.

Each chapter follows a basic pattern.

Cover the subject

See some real world usage

Identify some common anti-patterns

Point 2 is something I've rarely seen in a technical book, actually reaching out to commonly used libraries to identify actual usage of the subject matter of the chapter. I wish more books did this.

At the end of Part 1, you should be able to express most essential algorithms in Clojure and understand how to navigate a Clojure system, having seen all of the basic Clojure constructs like conditionals, vars, data literals, functional style, namespaces, etc.

By the end of Part 2, you should understand more about why Clojure code reads the way it does, why sequences of one sort or another are used relentlessly in idiomatic Clojure, what laziness is and why it's so useful, and how to exercise your code both explicitly and via property-based statements.

At the end of Part 3, you'll have seen most of the rest of what makes Clojure special. Java interop, state management (in true SICP fashion, mutable state is relegated to the back end of the book in the 'Advanced' section), easy concurrency, and the mighty LISP REPL and Macros.

Are there parts of Clojure not covered here? Sure. Is there anything that makes Clojure distinct or that you'll have trouble understanding once you digest this stuff? Nope. And it's only 250 pages.

The Index ★★★★☆

functions

tests

values

symbols

maps

sequences

collections

lazy sequences

threads

Symbols section

data

arguments

records

performance

arity

exceptions

immutability

keys

Java

keywords

lists

logic

macros

namespaces

multimethods

names

require

state

strings

vectors

I love that there's a section on Symbols here. It's reminiscent of the 'Hard to Google For' clojure.org guide.

Pivotal Chapters

If you've never seen Clojure before than Chapter 1 is the introduction you've been looking for.

Chapters 2 and 3 are introductions to the essential data literals that you'll find an almost all idiomatic Clojure code.

Chapter 6 covers Functional Programming and how it's accomplished in Clojure.

Chapter 9 covers how Clojure systems are organized in Namespaces and how you can navigate around them.

Chapters 10 and 11 cover the sequence abstraction.

Chapter 16 covers Java Interop.

Chapters 19 and 20 cover LISP topics from Clojure's perspective.

★★★★☆

This book is a practical guide to drawing and painting wildlife, people, countryside, and buildings.

Instead of providing abstract rules for the art of drawing, it primarily focuses on a long series of exercises designed to be copied. Each one focuses on one or more abstract elements of drawing and allows you to practice it by following along yourself. There are many such exercises, and you would leave the book a much better artist having taken the time to work through them all. In that way it is almost a workbook.

It contains an extensive introduction discussing various tools and supplies one might use and the benefits or detriments of each. It is further organized into sections on each of the four subjects listed above. General topics like perspective and proportion are covered in each section with special attention to application on the subject paid in each as well as specific topics to the given subject that have no bearing on the others.

Series of events surrounding an incident that results in Derek losing an arm.

Stiles learns to become a robotic mechanic, to develop a special arm for Derek (because shifting is funny with a prosthetic hand)

dual alpha pack

pretty slowed down, no big bads, going for a domestic sort of thing

Kwame Anthony Appiah discusses honor codes in the past and today. Appiah's book, "The Honor Code," is the subject of the first Princeton Pre-read program.