In Clojure, what are the other most important functions in Clojure core one must master to be productive?

Question

Other than map, filter, reduce , of the numerous other functions in clojure core, which are the next set of most useful/commonly used functions that I must learn to be productive ?

Answer 1

If you go to the 4clojure problems page and search for "core-functions", you'll find a bunch that the 4clojure team finds useful. To name a few:

• group-by
• distinct
• reductions
• frequencies
• partition
• merge-with
• interleave
• interpose

Answer 2

The sequence processing library is a lot of what to me makes Clojure Clojurish. This idea being to have many functions on a single datatype rather than a few functions on a few types. so I would say that learning all the sequence manipulation functions can have a huge benefit.

ps: a special shout out for for, reductions, and iterate

Answer 3

The cheatsheet is useful: http://clojure.org/cheatsheet, and doesn't take very long to read.

Answer 4

Your list of map, filter, and reduce covers some of the biggies, so adding to that list would probably duplicate what you already know.

One of Clojure's strengths is synchronization. I would start writing sample code to learn how to use those synchronization constructs, refs, agents, and atoms. A lot of the Clojure books cover it. I know Clojure in Action covers these quite well.

I would work with maps, though I am not specifically referring to a function, but to why maps are good in general as well as multimethods.

Finally, I would work with why you sometimes do need to use loop .. recur. The advice I have gotten over the past 1+ years has been very sound. Use it when you absolutely have to.