[arp242]

I tried to use Clojure a few weeks ago. I have two projects for it: the first is that I have a "TOML test matrix" where I compare different TOML implementations against the test suite. This works by feeding a binary a TOML document which then outputs a description of that in JSON. I set that up for a whole bunch of languages.

The second is instaparse, which I'd like to use to quickly test a TOML document against the TOML ABNF.

I couldn't get either to work. As in: I can't even get very simple examples to compile. The tooling is super confusing and weird. I appreciate that a lot of tooling you're not familiar with can be confusing and weird, but I managed to get to a lot of languages for my TOML test matrix to work, including many where I'm not familiar with. For some that took some time and patience, but that's okay. Clojure is the only one thus far where I just gave up (for now anyway).

So at least part of the answer to "why isn't it more popular" is "the tooling isn't very good". Maybe the tooling is "simple" by Hickey's definition of that, but it sure isn't "easy" by my definition, and in the end, "easy" does matter, especially for these kind of things.