Relevance Blog

I'm kind of in the same boat. There are plenty of resources for learning Clojure, but I haven't found any that help with the transition from object oriented programming to functional programming. I read Programming Clojure and I feel like I know the language, but I'm still working on thinking in terms of functional programming. Interestingly, Programming in Scala has helped some. The hybrid functional/object oriented approach has helped introduce functional concepts with a language that doesn't seem so foreign. It can be difficult to pick up a completely different language (different from C-like languages, anyway) as well as a new programming model at the same time. JavaScript: The Good Parts is also good for the same reason.

There's also an F#/C# book scheduled to come out later this year that looks like it might be good for learning the functional thought process: http://www.amazon.com/Functional-Programming-Real-World-Examples/dp/1933988924/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1248098702&sr=8-2

I found this blog post from Stuart Halloway to be informative as well: http://blog.thinkrelevance.com/2008/9/25/pcl-clojure-chapter-17

"Rifle-oriented programming": http://blog.thinkrelevance.com/2009/8/12/rifle-oriented-programming-with-clojure-2

After reading the above article, one could argue that if the definition of object oriented programming is flexible enough, clojure fits it. But we hit a philosophical problem. If clojure is object oriented because it can do all the stuff that oo languages can do, then oop becomes a meaningless metaphor, just a name for a set of common sense ideas. Oop NEEDS to be defined in terms of traditional object systems(with classes and methods and stuff like that) in order to make sense as a paradigm. If you define oop as "a general metaphor in which everything is an object and objects interact with each other via message passing" you can implement it in a variety of ways, all of which would be object oriented.

Simply put, if you don't have the concrete mechanics, the name you had for the result doesn't make sense anymore. Wow, i knew oop was a vaguely defined term, but i didn't know just how fragile its definition was until i started writing this comment.

Same here. http://railstips.org/ is always a great place for Rails, well, tips from John Nunemaker.

There's 74 Quality Ruby on Rails Resources and Tutorials: http://www.softwaredeveloper.com/features/74-ruby-on-rails-resources-tutorials-050207/ (not sure if this is dated or not)

19 Rails Tricks Most Rails Coders Don't Know: http://www.rubyinside.com/19-rails-tricks-most-rails-coders-dont-know-131.html

Mashable's 20+ Tools for RoR Development: http://mashable.com/2007/09/30/ruby-on-rails-toolbox/

Like PHP and libraries, a lot of Rails is plugins:

10 Must-Have Rails Plugins: http://blog.thinkrelevance.com/2008/6/16/10-must-have-rails-plugins and Top 11 Rails Plugins: http://www.juixe.com/techknow/index.php/2006/07/05/top-11-rails-plugins/