<story><title>Clojure Newbie Guide (2015)</title><url>http://www.clojurenewbieguide.com/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>georgewsinger</author><text>Here are the reasons I stopped using clojure (a phenomenal language) a year ago, in order of importance:&lt;p&gt;1. No C&amp;#x2F;C++ FFI.&lt;p&gt;2. Lack of a strong type system (clojure.spec almost solves this problem now, but when I quit this didn&amp;#x27;t exist yet).&lt;p&gt;3. Horrific startup times: although clojure itself is fast, its startup time isn&amp;#x27;t. This makes scripting in clojure unsatisfying. And you don&amp;#x27;t feel like a ninja when it takes 30 seconds to start a REPL. You can use clojurescript to target node to get around this, but then you cut yourself off to most of the powerhouse clojure libraries.&lt;p&gt;I now use Haskell (with C&amp;#x2F;C++ FFI). I do miss the homoiconicity (and slightly more concise syntax) of clojure. In my opinion Haskell and clojure are the two sexiest mainstream languages that you can get stuff done in.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>flavio81</author><text>If in any case you still feel the same about Clojure,  you should try Common Lisp, it has the three things you want:&lt;p&gt;1. Easy calls to C with CFFI. No Clojure-&amp;gt;Java-&amp;gt;JNI-&amp;gt;C, just straght CL-&amp;gt;C.&lt;p&gt;2. Useful, optional, type system (which can also catch mistakes at compile time with SBCL and other compilers)&lt;p&gt;3. Very fast startup times.&lt;p&gt;and &lt;i&gt;many&lt;/i&gt; more features like for example an object system that is massively above what Clojure and Java bring to the table, better exception handling, very explícit errors and nice stack traces, it can also compile to JVM if you want, etc.&lt;p&gt;If you like Lisp, try it. You already learned a Lisp so the jump is easy.</text></comment>
<story><title>Clojure Newbie Guide (2015)</title><url>http://www.clojurenewbieguide.com/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>georgewsinger</author><text>Here are the reasons I stopped using clojure (a phenomenal language) a year ago, in order of importance:&lt;p&gt;1. No C&amp;#x2F;C++ FFI.&lt;p&gt;2. Lack of a strong type system (clojure.spec almost solves this problem now, but when I quit this didn&amp;#x27;t exist yet).&lt;p&gt;3. Horrific startup times: although clojure itself is fast, its startup time isn&amp;#x27;t. This makes scripting in clojure unsatisfying. And you don&amp;#x27;t feel like a ninja when it takes 30 seconds to start a REPL. You can use clojurescript to target node to get around this, but then you cut yourself off to most of the powerhouse clojure libraries.&lt;p&gt;I now use Haskell (with C&amp;#x2F;C++ FFI). I do miss the homoiconicity (and slightly more concise syntax) of clojure. In my opinion Haskell and clojure are the two sexiest mainstream languages that you can get stuff done in.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Jach</author><text>I guess for #2 you didn&amp;#x27;t get a chance to try out Schema? (Now at &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;github.com&amp;#x2F;plumatic&amp;#x2F;schema&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;github.com&amp;#x2F;plumatic&amp;#x2F;schema&lt;/a&gt;) Or if so, I wonder what you found lacking in it? &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.lispcast.com&amp;#x2F;clojure.spec-vs-schema&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.lispcast.com&amp;#x2F;clojure.spec-vs-schema&lt;/a&gt; does a good job highlighting some differences..</text></comment>