I am not sure I buy into the argument that startup time is the hurdle to Clojure adoption. If that were the case, we would have at least seen more adoption for

I am not sure I buy into the argument that startup time is the hurdle to Clojure adoption. If that were the case, we would have at least seen more adoption for server use cases. Applying Occam's razor, I think Clojure is not popular for the same reason that common lisp is not popular - it is simply too hard. Functions and immutability are a more difficult abstraction to grasp compared to objects and procedures and mutable state. The overhead of finding quality talent is too high, and likely always will be because of this.