Why Clojure? (2018)
I always think it's hilarious when Clojure enthusiasts try to address concerns about the language by talking about parentheses, as if that was actually the major barrier to entry. The parentheses are at best a mild inconvenience...many people love them, including myself, but few people cite the parentheses as a reason to not use the language after actually trying it out. A non-exhaustive list on why <i>not</i> clojure:<p>* It's slow<p>* Development with the REPL is slow because the startup times are glacial and REPL-oriented development usually requires tons of from-scratch restarts.<p>* The tooling sucks: build systems, IDEs, debuggers, etc. If you feel like writing code with just an editor and a terminal is like going back to the stone ages, you're gonna want to bash your own head in with a mammoth bone club.<p>* Java interop is a black art, and when you need to use it, it will ruin any sense of elegance you felt for your code originally.<p>* The ecosystem practically doesn't exist, unless you're willing to absorb a lot of java libraries. See above.<p>* The lack of static types hurts you in many ways, most of all your ability to refactor with confidence.<p>* Clojurescript isn't the same language, no matter what they promise you. Clojurescript is weakly typed, Clojure is strongly typed. If you aren't aware of the difference, prepare to spend weeks of your life tracking down bugs that would only be days in Clojure, and would never exist in the first place in a statically/strongly typed language.