I wouldn't say you were the issue. The issue here is Clojure will fight you until you code in the style that it likes. I lost the battle, but Clojure's style is

I wouldn't say you were the issue. The issue here is Clojure will fight you until you code in the style that it likes. I lost the battle, but Clojure's style is better than my old style so I became a much better programmer. And of course, Clojure is the best language for programming in Clojure's style. If you don't like threading macros, try a 1-let-per-function style. I've seen some very capable Clojure devs who are in the habit of making lots of small, neat functions. It can be a lot prettier than threading macros. It works in Clojure because making small mutations to large objects is cheap - that enables small functions that tweak data structures in a way that would be unsafe in other languages.