I looked over the first example in the article and I don't think this assessment stands up. The Java example could easily be written with reflection and end up

I looked over the first example in the article and I don't think this assessment stands up. The Java example could easily be written with reflection and end up quite a lot shorter than the Clojure example. Sure, you can trade off static typing for terseness. This isn't a Java vs Clojure issue. You can make code even terser by abandoning documentation. Even more terse by abandoning tests! I don't have time to fully dive into the second example, but at first glance it looks like poorly written Java. You can write Java in a functional style! It can look a lot like Kotlin or Scala or even Clojure, and I generally prefer it to. Badly written code looks terrible in every language.