Clojure is slower than Java in general, but strives to provide you the tools that you need to write code "as fast as java" when you need it, eg. via type hints

Clojure is slower than Java in general, but strives to provide you the tools that you need to write code "as fast as java" when you need it, eg. via type hints (to avoid the need for reflection). Clojure's interop with Java is also different from most JVM languages in that it never wraps Java's native types. This means it can't eg. treat java Maps as functions like it does with clojure maps, but on the upside... there are no wrappers. :P Metaprogramming in Clojure is done via a CL-esque defmacro system. In addition to lists, vectors, maps and sets all have useful evaluation semantics, and are commonly used in DSLs. I actually prefer it to CL because you have more basic elements to work with.