This is in the case when the program is pure-clojure. In my case, I'm trying to bring some Clojure into an existing project with a sizable Java codebase. Anyw

This is in the case when the program is pure-clojure. In my case, I'm trying to bring some Clojure into an existing project with a sizable Java codebase. Anyway, I think that your clojure code would use String. Or joda's DateTime and zillion other brilliantly useful classes. It's not practical to either wrap or rewrite all the Java richness. Concerning your example: Clojure also does a good work of inferring types given a few type hints, and that I good use. Just a few hints, a great speed up.