[beders]

Lisp has ruined me forever. I'm not sure how I can go back to other languages.

I basically started out with Allegro Common Lisp on Sparc's, went to Java because it was the shiny new thing, and then in 2017 finally took the plunge and have been addicted to Clojure ever since.

Don't get me wrong: the learning curve can be steep, but the steepness - at least in my case - came from un-learning all the object-oriented stuff.

Once you understand the value of values and the simplicity it brings, it becomes such a joy to code in Clojure.

For the people on here disgusted by the JVM ecosystem: There are many alternatives for Clojure.

There's Clojure for .NET, ClojureScript in at least two flavors that compile down to JavaScript, there's a fast interpreter called babashka for scripting, there's Clojerl for the Erlang VM, there's jank - which adds gradual typing on a C++ runtime.

Oh, and there's jobs that pay really well ;)

[runevault]

How is Clojure for dotNet? I haven't touched Clojure in general for years (honestly I think it's been at least a decade) but I remember a lot of libraries making calls expecting the Java standard library so seems like things would have broken, but maybe it is gotten a lot better in recent years.

[puredanger]

It's been kept up to parity but a complete rewrite is currently under way - watch https://dmiller.github.io/clojure-clr-next/

[nocman]

I thought about doing some work on Clojure itself, but, alas, my last name isn't Miller. :-(

jk

[KingMob]

The Clojure development process is notoriously closed to outsiders.

Even in the early years, some people contributed time and code, and weren’t thanked. I would view attempts to contribute as very high risk for newcomers.

I personally maintained a fork for a couple years just for an unmerged patch I needed, rather than try to get the core team to merge it.

[nocman]

I think you may have missed the 'jk' (just kidding) at the end of my post.

[garbagecoder]

You don't have to be using a lisp to benefit from the different way it makes you think about things. In most languages it's at least somewhat possible to use some of its good stuff.