Simple example:
(def ticks 0)
(defn run-iteration []
(def ticks (inc ticks)))
Though the usual case involves things that don't change more than once every several hundred ms.
How to do this idiomatically?
Edit: and why is the idiomatic way idiomatic, and why is it good?
What you really want is one of clojure's mutable reference types, for your example, I would use an atom, like this:
(def ticks (atom 0))
(defn ++ticks []
(swap! ticks inc))
and to get the value, @ticks
Don't use a def for this, in fact the only sane reasons you can redef is to enable development at the repl or hot code reloading.
The above solution is idiomatic as clojure has a philosophy of maximal immutability and controlled mutability. An atom is the simplest form of controlled mutability provided by clojure. This solution is ready for use by multiple threads, and is appropriate for use by a single thread, without you having to think about it too much. That's the clojure way.
deref and reset! do little more than standard java fields; (with class Box {Object value;}) box.value and box.value = ...