[Antibabelic]

"The TIOBE index measures how many Internet pages exist for a particular programming language."

For some reason I doubt this is in any way representative of the real world. Scratch, which is a teaching language for children, bigger than PHP? Which is smaller than Rust? Yeah, these are results you get when you look at the Internet, alright.

[thunky]

Sure that index isn't great (I think it's basically a regurgitation of Google Trends), but I don't think you're suggesting Clojure is actually a popular language are you? Which is the only point I'm trying to make (that it isn't popular).

[Antibabelic]

Clojure is reasonably popular as far as programming languages go. It's not difficult to get a job as a Clojure developer, particularly in certain sectors (fintech and healthcare are the heaviest Clojure users). Of course C++, Java, C# and PHP dwarf both Clojure and Rust by several orders of magnitude.

[iLemming]

> It's not difficult to get a job as a Clojure developer

Let's be honest and avoid painting a misleading picture. Getting a job as a software developer of any kind is genuinely difficult right now. Finding a position on a Clojure team has always been relatively harder for various reasons - and not simply because of its [in]popularity.

Clojure tends to attract older, more experienced developers. If you want a full-time Clojure role but have no prior experience with it, you'll often need to accept a junior-level salary - something many seasoned developers can't afford or simply won't do.

Junior developers have it even harder. Recruiting pipelines don't really distinguish between experience levels - everyone goes through roughly the same process, and juniors are expected to keep up with veterans, with almost no room for error.

Senior, battle-tested Clojure devs face a different kind of pressure. Interviews are frequently grueling, mentally exhausting sessions comparable to architect-level evaluations in other places. And because Clojure enables small, skilled teams to accomplish a lot, companies rarely need to hire in bulk - so competition for each opening is fierce.

This creates a frustrating situation for everyone, companies included. They want top-tier talent but offer junior salaries, while simultaneously rejecting juniors and anyone without direct Clojure experience. Supply and demand are badly out of balance.

That breeds resentment - "why bother learning it if I'll never get hired?" Honestly, there's no clean answer, and Rust seems to be in a similar spot right now. Even so, the language is worth learning. It has real practical value, even when you're not using it on a team. The future-proof choice I believe is to learn both - Rust and Clojure. Exploring both of these languages, I can honestly think things will change in their favor. Unless you want to stay sad at nearly-burnout levels for the next decade or more with TS/Python/Java/etc.