This is a great talk on exactly this topic from a Clojure conference, if you want a long answer. It focuses on the “functional” feature of Clojure but all of it

This is a great talk on exactly this topic from a Clojure conference, if you want a long answer. It focuses on the “functional” feature of Clojure but all of it applies to the whole language (and probably any good lisp) IMO. https://youtu.be/QyJZzq0v7Z4?si=y3hhYaInMkRLBCJK https://youtu.be/QyJZzq0v7Z4?si=y3hhYaInMkRLBCJK My brief text answer (focused on Clojure): -python has been around about 20 more years than Clojure -the advantages of Clojure vs python/etc probably aren’t nearly as big as python vs a non memory managed, compiled, static language like C. That whole generation of “scripting” languages had the wind at their backs in a way Clojure and its contemporaries never quite will (though Clojure et al tend to be much better at concurrency and parallelism and this will help a lot) -unfamiliar syntax (not Algol like) and paradigm (not oop)- and the truth is many programmers back away slowly when a thing is too alien -hasn’t found a niche as big as data science or scientific computing or CRUD website building - I think python has aggregated some great academic niches, at least one of which (ML/data science) exploded in popularity. Ruby had the rails community. Clojure seems to have some popularity in fintech but has no big single niche yet that it dominates.