I partially agree, but I wouldn't say: "a certain class of problems very easy to solve". Instead I'd say: "which have a product that first delivers on a new mar

I partially agree, but I wouldn't say: "a certain class of problems very easy to solve". Instead I'd say: "which have a product that first delivers on a new market use case". As someone who loves Clojure, I make this correction, because for example, Clojure has no such product, and in that sense it isn't very popular. Yet I can still use it to solve many class of problems easily and often faster than it takes me in other languages. For example, Ruby got big because it delivered on a new kind of web framework just at the time they were becoming popular. Go became popular only because it has a runtime with more modern tuning, prioritizing responsiveness over performance just when that started to become the new priority due to the shift to software as a service. Python became popular only once it gave rise to NumPy and the plethora of data-science libs it offers. Java became popular because it delivered on the first enterprise grade virtual machine. JavaScript because it was embedded in the browser. Etc. Which takes me back to Clojure. Since you say you are learning it. I'd say for me Clojure's special in that it focuses not on any product as such, but instead on the language itself. Using it is more about one's enjoyment and productivity. The key part is, it gives this enhanced language while letting you choose what existing product you want to use it with. That's the hosted nature of it. In that sense, it provides a more enjoyable interface to some of the best products. So you can use Clojure's better syntax, core functions and abstractions and language semantics and extensibility and expressiveness and interactivity with existing high quality products like everything the JVM or JS offers, with some extras like .Net, Erlang, subset of C++, etc. Disclaimer: I like Clojure, so am biased. Not everyone will find its syntax, functions, abstractions, interactivity, and expressivity to their liking, and if not, Clojure does not have a killer product and thus provide little value.