Book title suggestion

[Simon Katz]

I'm looking forward to this!

Zach: Are you familiar with the book The Elements of Programming Style (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elements_of_Programming_Style)? And as that page says "It has been influential and has spawned a series of similar texts tailored to individual languages, such as The Elements of C Programming Style, The Elements of C# Style, The Elements of Java(TM) Style, The Elements of MATLAB Style, etc".

Based on that, I suggest The Elements of Clojure Style as the title.

[Zach Tellman]

Hi Simon,

I own the Kernighan book, and read through it a few times when considering the choice of my title.  You're the third or fourth person to suggest that my title is an imprecise parallel for Strunk and White, which I may have invited by drawing the parallel in the introduction.  I think what I failed to convey is that I have larger ambitions than providing a style guide for Clojure.  I've made some changes to the introduction, the key points of which I'll quote here:

> This book is named, in part, for Strunk and White's classic Elements of Style. Like its namesake, it aims to be short, opinionated, and sometimes wrong. It is intended for readers who are already familiar with Clojure's core concepts, and wish to use them to good effect. Where possible, this book will give concise, prescriptive advice on how to write idiomatic Clojure.

> However, many aspects of software defy prescriptive advice. Strunk and White largely concern themselves with the elements of a well-written sentence, but a novel is not just a collection of sentences. The same is true for software; the relationships between the expressions matter as much as the expressions themselves. This book addresses these aspects by describing the space of possible approaches, and providing a framework for deciding which to use.

I may make further changes, but I'd like to know if this makes it more clear to you why the title is "Elements of Clojure" and not "Elements of Clojure Style".

Thanks,

Zach

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[Simon Katz]

HI Zach,

Yes, that does make things more clear to me. Thanks.

Good luck with the book!

Simon

On Sunday, 20 March 2016 04:33:23 UTC, Zach Tellman wrote:

Hi Simon,

I own the Kernighan book, and read through it a few times when considering the choice of my title.  You're the third or fourth person to suggest that my title is an imprecise parallel for Strunk and White, which I may have invited by drawing the parallel in the introduction.  I think what I failed to convey is that I have larger ambitions than providing a style guide for Clojure.  I've made some changes to the introduction, the key points of which I'll quote here:

> This book is named, in part, for Strunk and White's classic Elements of Style. Like its namesake, it aims to be short, opinionated, and sometimes wrong. It is intended for readers who are already familiar with Clojure's core concepts, and wish to use them to good effect. Where possible, this book will give concise, prescriptive advice on how to write idiomatic Clojure.

> However, many aspects of software defy prescriptive advice. Strunk and White largely concern themselves with the elements of a well-written sentence, but a novel is not just a collection of sentences. The same is true for software; the relationships between the expressions matter as much as the expressions themselves. This book addresses these aspects by describing the space of possible approaches, and providing a framework for deciding which to use.

I may make further changes, but I'd like to know if this makes it more clear to you why the title is "Elements of Clojure" and not "Elements of Clojure Style".

Thanks,

Zach

On Sat, Mar 19, 2016 at 3:22 PM Simon Katz <nomi...@gmail.com> wrote:

I'm looking forward to this!

Zach: Are you familiar with the book The Elements of Programming Style (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elements_of_Programming_Style)? And as that page says "It has been influential and has spawned a series of similar texts tailored to individual languages, such as The Elements of C Programming Style, The Elements of C# Style, The Elements of Java(TM) Style, The Elements of MATLAB Style, etc".

Based on that, I suggest The Elements of Clojure Style as the title.

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