I personally think how clojure has been presented so far is its greatest strength and it is the reason why it is so strong so far and why it continues to get stronger. You have to be a better than average programmer, one who has worked with multiple languages from multiple paradigms, who has worked with real production code before, to recognize why it is so much superior to any other programming language currently available right now.
I'm GLAD that there is currently no killer app for Clojure, like how Rails became the killer app for Ruby. IMO Rails killed Ruby. Ruby started out in the right direction but once Rails became popular there was an influx of so-so programmers who started polluting the language with inefficient concepts, constantly reinventing the wheel poorly because they did not know enough computer science to know that a better solution had already been invented. Now the system has been bogged down by so much cruft, it is difficult to see if it still serves the purpose it was originally designed for (a language the people can enjoy programming in).
Clojure is not ready yet. The core team is still working on refining the fundamentals for what maybe can become the 100 year language [http://paulgraham.com/hundred.html] -- look at reducers in 1.4. Right now Clojure doesn't need more people. It needs more smart people. If you are not smart enough to understand why it is worth switching to it, maybe you should wait a bit and let the design mature more. The killer apps will come. Clojure's ability to scale complexity will eventually overcome its current drawbacks, as the tools and the ecosystem matures.
Comments
I personally think how clojure has been presented so far is its greatest strength and it is the reason why it is so strong so far and why it continues to get stronger. You have to be a better than average programmer, one who has worked with multiple languages from multiple paradigms, who has worked with real production code before, to recognize why it is so much superior to any other programming language currently available right now.
I'm GLAD that there is currently no killer app for Clojure, like how Rails became the killer app for Ruby. IMO Rails killed Ruby. Ruby started out in the right direction but once Rails became popular there was an influx of so-so programmers who started polluting the language with inefficient concepts, constantly reinventing the wheel poorly because they did not know enough computer science to know that a better solution had already been invented. Now the system has been bogged down by so much cruft, it is difficult to see if it still serves the purpose it was originally designed for (a language the people can enjoy programming in).
Clojure is not ready yet. The core team is still working on refining the fundamentals for what maybe can become the 100 year language [http://paulgraham.com/hundred.html] -- look at reducers in 1.4. Right now Clojure doesn't need more people. It needs more smart people. If you are not smart enough to understand why it is worth switching to it, maybe you should wait a bit and let the design mature more. The killer apps will come. Clojure's ability to scale complexity will eventually overcome its current drawbacks, as the tools and the ecosystem matures.