[nnmg]

I'll always admire clojure. Loved the simplicity and philosophy, and I wrote a few toy projects. Unfortunately I felt like I could never really take advantage of the power of clojure or do real work in it because I didn't know or have a history with Java. It always felt like clojure was for enlightened Java or JS programmers, and I didn't want to learn Java and clojure at once so I was stuck in beginner land.

[casion]

You don't need to learn Java, only be aware of it. Nubank has 100(0?)s of devs that don't know Java at all and successfully use Clojure.

Even if your assumption is true, what's wrong with that? A language which offers more value over an existing base of knowledge is valuable and isn't uncommon.

[geokon]

Past a very baby level you kinda need to know the JVM world a bit. Lots of keywords like "classpath", Maven, reflection etc..

You def don't need to know Java as a whole, but it was actually a little challenging and confusing to catch up on the relevant JVM bits.

Educational material either doesn't use it at all or assumes you know it