ABCL is a full implementation of Common Lisp (an ANSI-standarized language rich on features and with a proven record of success stories) that happens to run in

ABCL is a full implementation of Common Lisp (an ANSI-standarized language rich on features and with a proven record of success stories) that happens to run in the JVM and has good facilities for calling Java code. However it is a full Common Lisp implementation which means it has all the nice stuff you would expect from such a piece of software. Clojure, on the other hand, is a different programming language, which for some reasons, and by design, is deeply tied to the underlying Java platform. Clojure "looks like a Lisp", but in reality it is fundamentally different from languages "of the Lisp family" like Scheme, Emacs Lisp and Common Lisp. There are many, many differences between Clojure and Common Lisp. For a HN thread on this topic, see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10206827 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10206827