Clojure is oriented towards functional programming, hence no loops, but because it's also a thin abstraction over the JVM, it doesn't provide tail-call eliminat

Clojure is oriented towards functional programming, hence no loops, but because it's also a thin abstraction over the JVM, it doesn't provide tail-call elimination, so you can't write traditional functional code the way you would in SML or Scheme. Instead, you have to use the clumsy "recur" construct to work around the JVM's limitations. It's also less consistent than proper Lisps. For example, it's possible to produce a Java OverflowException using Clojure math operators. Some operations will gracefully upgrade to bignums, but others don't.