> It's worth talking about Clojure as an alternative to Scala. It's probably more accurate to think of each as alternatives to Java. Why the distinction? Frank

> It's worth talking about Clojure as an alternative to Scala. It's probably more accurate to think of each as alternatives to Java. Why the distinction? Frankly, the two seem almost diametrically opposed to each other in their approach to things. The properties of one that might attract a user seem almost totally absent in the other. At the highest level Clojure's approach seems to prioritize simplicity above all else (except perhaps pragmatism). Even a cursory glance at Scala's type system gives one the feeling that simplicity was not high on Martin's list of priorities. Scala's facilities for abstraction complect objects, types, and traits. Clojure prefers piecemeal abstraction (e.g. "polymorphism a la carte.") Even Clojure's reader macros, which are arguably one of the (relatively) more complex features of the language, are relatively simple compared to Scala's implicits. As Neal Ford said, Scala will probably end up winning the Java.next race because it "fetishizes complexity in exactly the way Java developers are used to." I don't think many users of either language view the other as a suitable "alternative."