http://lisp-univ-etc.blogspot.com/2011/11/clojure-complexity.html?m=1
Clojure & Complexity
....Final thoughts
I've written a long article, but there are many more details left out (just adding code snippets, will make it twice as big). There's also a lot of good things about Clojure, which I didn't mention: its seamless integration with Java, for example, which makes it a good scripting language for Java applications. Macros, basic datastructures, vars, they all work great. Ring was also an enlightenment.
Yet, overall the language doesn't leave up to its promise of being a modern Lisp: actually, it's not a Lisp at all. Well, how do you define Lisp? S-expressions, macros, closures etc? Surely, all (at least most of) those features may be present, although Dylan was a Lisp without s-expressions, for example. But, in my opinion as a Lisp programmer, what makes a true Lisp is dynamicity, simplicity and putting control in developer's hands (flexibility and extensibility). The mentioned features are mostly a derivative of this principles, and also they all should have a backend for extension: reader, compiler, condition system, object system, special variables etc, they all do in Lisp. And Clojure gives up on all these principles if not altogether, than substantially: many of the features are there and the new ones arrived, but the backend is missing.
Common Lisp is well optimized for the common use-cases in the design space of dynamic flexible languages. And it's probably very close to local maximum in it. At least it's good enough. Clojure is more of a hybrid, and hybrids are built by complecting: in Clojure's case complecting Lisp and Java, Lisp and Haskell. The result is interesting, but, in my opinion, it's not optimal. Surely it has its use-cases.
Still, Clojure sees decent adoption (which is good, because it proves, that parens aren't a problem after all :) I think it's a combination of several things. The language still has a lot of good stuff from Lisp (as well as some good things from Haskell, although they don't match very well), and those who start using it are mostly Java and Ruby programmers, for whom it breaks the psychological barriers to using Lisp (we all know the FUD). The other thing is lack of a decent native (not like Jython or JRuby) dynamic language on the JVM. And finally, there's marketing, i.e. Clojure concurrency primitives. And the challenge for Clojure community is to produce a «killer» application, that will utilize them, or the hype will wane, and pretty soon...
