Book Image

Clojure High Performance Programming

By : Shantanu Kumar
Book Image

Clojure High Performance Programming

By: Shantanu Kumar

Overview of this book

<p>Clojure is a young, dynamic, functional programming language that runs on the Java Virtual Machine. It is built with performance, pragmatism, and simplicity in mind. Like most general purpose languages, Clojure’s features have different performance characteristics that one should know in order to write high performance code.<br /><br />Clojure High Performance Programming is a practical, to-the-point guide that shows you how to evaluate the performance implications of different Clojure abstractions, learn about their underpinnings, and apply the right approach for optimum performance in real-world programs.<br /><br />This book discusses the Clojure language in the light of performance factors that you can exploit in your own code.</p> <p>You will also learn about hardware and JVM internals that also impact Clojure’s performance. Key features include performance vocabulary, performance analysis, optimization techniques, and how to apply these to your programs. You will also find detailed information on Clojure's concurrency, state-management, and parallelization primitives.</p> <p>This book is your key to writing high performance Clojure code using the right abstraction, in the right place, using the right technique.</p>
Table of Contents (15 chapters)
Clojure High Performance Programming
Credits
About the Author
Acknowledgments
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Chapter 5. Concurrency

Concurrency was one of the chief design goals of Clojure. Considering the concurrent programming model in Java, it is not only too low level but also so tricky to get right that without strictly following patterns, you are more likely to shoot yourself in the foot. Locks, synchronization, and unguarded mutation—these are recipes for concurrency pitfalls unless exercised with extreme caution. Clojure's design choices deeply influence the way concurrency patterns can be achieved in a safe and functional manner. In this chapter we will discuss:

  • Low-level concurrency support at the hardware and JVM levels

  • The concurrency primitives of Clojure—atoms, agents, refs, and vars

  • The built-in concurrency features in Java that are safe and useful for use with Clojure

  • Parallelization with Clojure features and reducers