Maybe part of your problem is that his explanation in this particular interview is on a very basic level, using concepts that any freshman can understand. For

Maybe part of your problem is that his explanation in this particular interview is on a very basic level, using concepts that any freshman can understand. For a deeper version of Hickey's ideas, see his talk from the JVM language summit, or some of the docs on clojure.org. (Or better yet, read the Clojure source code...) http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=829268 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=829268 http://clojure.org/state http://clojure.org/state