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Reading the comments I get the impression that Clojure is competing with Java, and it seems that it cannot win against Java, for various reasons, and I am sadde

• puredanger 6y ago
  Clojure was designed to be applicable where Java is applicable. Fortunately that space of programs is enormous and the market is enormous. Clojure does not need to "win" against Java (or anything). It is unlikely (for many reasons that have nothing to do with its value as a language) to ever be more than a fraction as popular as Java, but that's irrelevant. It has a thriving sustainable ecosystem with 10k's of devs in 100's of companies. That is sufficient to call it a success.
• simongray 6y ago
  > What does it mean to see a rather promising Lisp-like language not getting traction, for the the future of Lisp(s)? I think this sentiment ("Clojure is dying") has kind of become a Hacker News meme at this point. Clojure basically came out of nowhere and pretty much displaced all other Lisps in about a decade. It is definitely not dying, it's just an opinionated, fairly niche language - it's not Go or TypeScript. It solves certain problems well and has some uses where it really shines. It's not a silver bullet, though, and it definitely requires serious learning/unlearning to get really good at it if all you know is the mainstream imperative/OOP style. Clojure works well for those who buy its rationale: https://clojure.org/about/rationale https://clojure.org/about/rationale
  • dunefox 6y ago
    How did it displace all other Lisps if a) they're still going string and b) they weren't mainstream in the first place?