# 5 mistakes I made writing my first Clojure application

DevFeed: [5 mistakes I made writing my first Clojure application](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/5-mistakes-i-made-writing-my-first-clojure-application-32123.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://adambard.com/blog/five-mistakes-clojure-newbies-make/>)

Published: 2014-07-02T00:00:00Z

Content type: opinion

Language: en

Sources: [Adam Bard](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/adam-bard.md>)

Topics: [Clojure](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/clojure.md>), [Code](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/code.md>), [Refactoring](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/refactoring.md>), [Database](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/database.md>)

Tags: [application](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/application.md>), [clojure](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/clojure.md>), [code](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/code.md>), [database](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/database.md>), [functional](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/functional.md>), [mistakes](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/mistakes.md>), [refactoring](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/refactoring.md>), [writing](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/writing.md>)

## AI overview

The author reviews five mistakes from building a first sizable Clojure application, including deeply nested conditionals, the lack of a dedicated validation layer, custom schema checking, and automatic function generation. The article uses these examples to discuss simpler functional design and refactoring practices.

## Source excerpt

It's been about two years since I undertook my first sizable application in Clojure, and really my first experience architecting a system in a functional language. It was a local dating application, and it's still up and running, despite the sins below. But, reading the code now, a few dire instances of truely bad code emerge. So, I crawled through for some examples, which I now impart to you: